This photo engages both with representational and non-representational theory. If I was to consider this image in representational terms it is simply a blurry photo of someone’s silhouette walking along the beach. But it is non-representational terms where the image really shines. In fact I would argue that the non-representational reading of this image attacks the suggestion in Phillip Vannini’s Non-Representational Research Methodologies Introduction, that non-representational work is “boosting aliveness” (Vannini, 2015, p. 6). My reading would predicate on feelings of deathless, veil between worlds, getting stolen away at the witching hour, seeing something in the corner of your eye and then it being gone, loneliness, haunting, lapping, fear, not belonging, and a whole host of other seminal moments between fears and dreams. Though this is just my reading and as non-representational theory suggests the idea would be to refuse any one reading or understanding of a text.

For me where it touches non-representational theory most is that it riots against the idea that photography needs to produce the ‘real’. This photo as a non-representational reading is more about what is not there than what is.

And of course I think we should all consider the possibility that I may have read the theory wrong. I’ll be honest my mind boggled around this one. A theory that seemed to reject that notion that it could be analysed or sit comfortably in any status quo, makes it hard to look at a work and consider with any certainty how it fits into the theory.

Though I will say that what stood out to me most from the reading was the suggestion that “in the end our job as non-representationalists is simply to fail better” (Vannini, 2015, p. 7). I’ll take that in stride because I have really almost no clue what is going on here. So I’m just going to steamroll ahead with a restlessness and disenchantment with reality and acceptance of what is in front of me, and if I fail spectacularly then I’ll have achieved something too.

references: Vannini, P 2015, Non-Representational Research Methodologies, Taylor and Francis Group, pp. 1-18