Poetry and Photography

For me, poetry and photography work the same way.

Poetry is words, their rhythms, their sounds and their arrangements.
It's the emotion that feeds on all that and develops in us.
Understanding only comes afterwards, in a more thoughtful second stage, just to give substance to the emotion.

The photo is elements in their frame, their connotations, their arrangements (composition), their dynamics in the course of the eyes during exploration….
All these elements contribute to the emotion which, starting from the eyes, resounds throughout the body.
We enter the image, without knowing where we are.
The comprehension arrives there, just after and gives a sort of validation to the photo to become an image in the sense of the mental image.

When we say a poem, or show a photo,
it is necessary, with the understanding that we have of the poem or the photo, to suggest the rhythms, the arrangements, the emotions with the intonation in the diction of the poem or the caption or commentary of the photograph, but do not reveal nothing of the understanding that is the business of the listener or the viewer.

Sergio Larrain 

Sergio Larrain  (1931-2012) Photographe humaniste  chilien membre de l'agence Magnum ….

« Tu vas te promener…
 sans jamais te forcer cependant à prendre des photos quand tu sors, 
car on en perd la poésie, 
la vie qui s’y trouve dépérit.   
                               C’est comme forcer l’amour ou l’amitié, ça ne se peut pas …»

                    /1982  Sergio Larrain lettre  à son neveu  (in Chloé Morille, « Des photographies « poétiques » ?)

1 Enquête sur les usages et pratiques d’une métaphore », Fabula-LhT, n° 18, « Un je-ne-sais-quoi de « poétique » », avril 2017, URL : http://www.fabula.org/lht/18/morille.html, page consultée le 09 septembre 2021)