Taco Hidde Bakker

Photography and Cinema

Photographs do not say more than a thousand words. In fact, they say nothing at all. They are mute, and that’s what makes up their quality and their enigma. A single photograph is unable to show much nor to explain what it shows. To become meaningful and explicit, a photograph needs to be contextualised with a caption or a written or recorded commentary. It will show its shortcomings as a record of any kind unless it is woven into a narrative or will be part of a sequence of images. The film series Contacts, initiated by William Klein, shows this perfectly. In short cine-essays photojournalists and art photographers reveal their working methods by analysing their contact sheets. We get to see the before and after of their generally well-known photographs: the time of the image is stretched beyond that of the single frame.