Symbolism in Art and Photography

Govind Bhattacharjee

(I) Symbolism in Literature and Painting

Art, like life, represents an essential unity in the varied and dissimilar experiences of life and their
representations, and in that sense I think all forms of art, be it literature or music, painting or photography,
cinema or theatre, are harmonised at some level. What happens in one form of art invariably influences
all others, ideas and movements that stir and stimulate one form of art inevitably find their reflections in
others as well. They capture the dominant contemporary torrents of thoughts in their own ways and grow
in tandem. It was the same with symbolism also.

Poets play with words, words are the poet’s tools. Tools of the photographers are images, apart from the
camera. Both are nothing but symbols that represent something else. A photograph is nothing but a
symbol, a representation of the photographer’s subject. But it is an icon independent of the subject that
it represents, an entity in its own right created by the photographer who only uses the subject for his
creation. It is an idea that takes its birth in the mind of the photographer, the idea does not lie in the
subject and neither does it originate from it. Photographers deal with such symbols all the time,
consciously or unconsciously.

Humans have been playing with symbols since the misty dawn of history, in those unremembered times
when they used to dwell in cave shelters in the womb of the mother Earth, wondering about the meaning
of life and death, the mystery of their origin and the nature of the uncertain world they inhabited. They
invented symbols to decorate the walls and ceilings of their caves with vivid impressions of their lives
which have survived the ravages of time in cave shelters across the world, from Bhimbetka in India to
Altamira in Spain, Lascaux in France, Khoit Tsenkher in Mongolia, Pedra Furada in Brazil, Tassili n'Ajjer in
Algeria, and many other places across the globe spanning all continents. Symbols are, in fact, much older
than civilisation.

In modern times, however, symbolism first began in France as a literary movement in the 1880s with the
publication of Jean Moréas’ manifesto, “Le Symbolisme”, in Le Figaro in 1886. In it, Moréas had
proclaimed that symbolism was against “plain meanings, declamations, false sentimentality and matter-
of-fact description”. A ‘symbolist’, Moréas said, should strive to “clothe the Ideal in a perceptible form”
whose “goal was not in itself, but whose sole purpose was to express the Ideal”. Symbolism thus arose as
a reaction against naturalism and realism or impressionism that had become the dominant philosophies
in art and literature in the nineteenth century Europe, almost synonymous with the Western European
culture of the time. Naturalism laid excessive emphasis upon observation and scientific method in the
fictional portrayal of reality, while realism or impressionism depended on the truthful representation of
reality without bringing anything artificial, exotic, implausible or supernatural into art. Symbolism
believed in the pure subjectivity and the expression of an idea rather than its mere realistic or objective
description. An example of this can be found in Baudelaire’s poem:

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 Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,/Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les
prairies,/—Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,/ Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,/ Qui
chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

(There are perfumes that are fresh like children's flesh,/sweet like oboes, green like meadows /—
And others, corrupt, rich, and triumphant,

having the expansiveness of infinite things, /like amber, musk, benzoin, and incense, which sing
of the raptures of the soul and senses.)

Another person whose works inspired the literary symbolism was Edgar Allen Poe, whose works were
translated by Baudelaire in French. Symbolists wanted to believe more in dreams rather than in reality,
more in exotic than the ordinary, more in the “Frieze of Life” than in “Still Life”, more in the imagination
of the deviant than in the purity of the ideal, more in the mystic than in the visionary.

In painting, symbolism synthesised form with feeling, and external objective reality with the inner
subjectivity of the painter. They wanted to recreate the emotional experiences and turmoil through their
paintings, through a combination of colour, form and composition, and it mattered little if in the process
the objective reality happened to get distorted. The leaders of symbolist movements in painting were
French painters Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin, Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, Austrian painter
Gustav Klimt and British painter Aubrey Beardsley. It was a rebellion against established norms, and it
elevated one’s inner feelings above everything else, in the belief that the artist has power to reveal truth
through exploration of that inner world where the erotic, the evil and the mysterious screamed at the
holy, the pure and the faithful.
The Eye Like a Strange Balloon
Mounts Toward Infinity (1882)
Odilon Redon

The single eye - the all-seeing eye of God - is an old symbol, which
has been transformed. “The large scale of the eye is the symbol of
the spirit rising up out of the dead matter of the swamp. It is a
physical organ that looks upward toward the divine, taking with it
the dead skull. The aura of light surrounding the main image helps
express the idea of the supernatural, as does the nebulous space.
The work evokes a sense of mystery within a dream world.”

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 Vision after the Sermon (1888) The painting depicts a vision of Jacob wrestling with
Paul Gauguin an angel. It draws a distinction between “reality and
spiritual manifestation”. While the faithful souls
experience the vision in the foreground, the struggle
appears in the background. Abstraction of the red
ground is used to represent “heightened emotions
present at a religious revelation”. The combat may
be symbolic of the struggle between the conventions
of an industrialised society and the freedom of the
primitive, romantic and ethereal individual that lives
within each human.

Death and the Masks (1897)

James Ensor

Death in the center gets lifelike qualities, with its

chilling grin. “The mask becomes the face, and yet it
is still a mask that tries to cover up the spiritual
hollowness of the bourgeoisie and the decadence of
the times.”

The Dance of Life (1899-1900) The three stages in the life of a woman are
Edvard Munch presented in this picture – “the virgin
symbolized by white, the carnal woman of
experience in red, and the aged, satanic
woman in black. The sea is the beyond,
eternity, the edge of life into the vast
unknown, and finally, death. The dance is
therefore the playing out of earthly life and
the life of the senses before death, and for
the time being, at least, keeps death at bay.
In the background, a lone, female figure
stands in front of the Freudian male phallic
symbol of the setting sun's reflection.”

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 Death stares at life ion this picture. “The figures who
Death and Life (1908-16)
Gustav Klimt come into being, exist, and pass out of existence;
they are born, live, and die as part of the great
stream of life. This painting takes part in the
fashionable pessimism of the age, which identified a
cosmos driven by sexual (as opposed to sinful)
urges, part of a blind drive to procreate.”
But the human figures do not seem scared by death,
they give a peaceful feeling of acceptance of the
inevitable without resignation. They look rather
peacefully embracing each other in the eternal
sleep, without fear or any sense of loss. Possibly the
ideas of the contemporary psychologist Sigmund
Freud about “Eros, the sexual instinct for the
purpose of the continuation of life and Thanatos,
the death instinct for the purpose of ending the
anxieties of life” are also reflected in this painting.

(II) Symbolism in Photography

Ever since photography was discovered in 1839 by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and William Henry
Fox Talbot in 1839, photographers have been experimenting with form, composition, colour and
content as well as techniques. Photography has been used to document the lives of individuals
as well as events taking place in the society, as a faithful witness and as a mirror with a memory
of the times.

In 1861, an English critique by the name C Jabez Huges wrote, “Hitherto photography has been
principally content with representing Truth. Can its sphere not be enlarged? And may it not aspire
to delineate Beauty, too?” He urged photographers to shoot photographs whose aim is not
purely to amuse, but to instruct, purify and ennoble.” The concept was not new, of course. Evert
since photography came into being, it has been attempted to be used as an art form by creative
artists who refused to be bound and limited by what the camera saw, as evidenced in many
famous and not-so-famous pictures taken since the 1850s. Some of the immortal photographs in
this category include “Two Ways of Life” by Oscar Gustav Rejlander (1857), “Fading Away” by
Henry Preach Robinson (1858), “The Kiss of Peace” by Julia Margaret Cameron (1867) or “Don
Quixote in His Study” by William Lake Price (1890).

In the history of photography, the period 1839-90 is reckoned as the first phase of “Art
Photography”. The second phase would begin and flourish when symbolism was carving its niche

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in literature and painting in Europe and North America, that is, between 1890 and 1920, with the
era of “Pictorialism” in photography, dominated by stalwarts without whom photography would
not have attained the status of art in its own right, at par with any other forms of visual
expression. They included the all-time greats like Alfred Stieglitz, Eduard Steichen, Eugene Smith,
Henry Ward, Frank Eugene, Clarence White, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, George
Davison, Friedrich E. Evans, John D. Johnston, Wilhelm von Gloeden and many others.

But it was during the third phase of Art Photography, during 1920-1945, when symbolism has
already lost its earlier influence upon the art of painting, that symbolism in photography reached
the pinnacle of its creation, by discovering an entirely new mien and using symbols to give
expression to their creative ideas of photographers in the most novel and imaginative ways.
Pioneers in this creative exploration of photography included photographers like Man Ray,
Christian Schad, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Hannah Hoch, Geoge Grosz, John Heartfield, Raol
Hausemann, Alvin Langdon, Paul Strand, Alexander Rodchenko, and many others, from many
countries, covering practically all continents. Some of their paintings may resemble surrealistic
or cubist paintings, and some of them focussed on the content of their photographs rather than
on the form, but to the extent that they were using symbols to impart life unto their creations,
they were imbibing the spirit of symbolism in their art. Truth and beauty are not antithetical, and
vicissitudes of life with all its disorder, vulgarity and vitality are also real. As long as an art form
allowed to capture the truth of beauty in the vicissitudes of life, which as Thomas Hobbes said, is
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, that art form will remain true to life, and its appeal will
not be lost. Appeal of symbolism therefore is transcendental, it transcends time and space.

A full discussion on all these symbolist photographers is beyond the scope of this article. I must
mention that there has not been much detailed exploration of this aspect either in photography
and one of the objectives of writing this article is to provoke more debate and exploration on this
area. In the rest of this article, I will pick up a few symbolist photographers and cite some of their
photographs as illustrations of the creative ways in which symbolism has been explored by them.
Visual art does not need much explanation – similarities between symbols and reality will be
apparent to the reader, I shall attempt to suggest some links, which need not necessarily be right;
in any case, concepts of right or wrong do not apply to any form of art.

One can seek and find symbols in Mother Nature all around us and use these symbols to
represent the realities of the everyday world we live in and deal with. Symbols in any way will
penetrate all photographs; by consciously identifying these symbols, a photographer can use
them most creatively with astounding effects. After all, symbols are the basic blocks in the
toolbox of a photographer, which he/she uses with imagination and vision to create a new
heaven and a new earth for all of us.

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 III. A Few Illustrations of Symbolism in Photography

Edward Weston (1886-1958)

Art has become life or life has become art?

Cloud, 1924

Pine, Lake Tenaya, Yosemite

National Park, 1937

Nude, 1925

Green Pepper, 1930

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Eduard Jean Steichen (1879-1973)
Symbols of civilisation looming over humanity? Reflection of the inner world? Or wistful thinking? Or, just
that appearance disappear into mystery, disengaging itself from reality?

The Flatiron Evening, 1906 Rodin, Le Penseur, 1905

Moonlight: The Pond, 1906 Mother and Child - Sunlight, 1906

(Across a forest by the pond)

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Others
Strife, turmoil, pains, ambitions and aspirations of modern life?

Hanna Hoch, The Cut of the Kitchen Knife, 1919 Man Ray, Violon d’Ingress, 1924

Raoul Hausmann, Mechanical Toys, 1957 Jan Lauschmann, Castle Staircase, 1927

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Benu Sen, Mother Benu Sen, Forbidden Flower

References:
1. Newhall, Beaumont, The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present Day, The Museum of
Modern art, New York, 1964
2. Rosenblum, Naomi, A World History of Photography, Abeville Press, New York, 3rd Edition, 1997
3. The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, London, 2000
4. The copies of paintings as well the quotes against them are from:
http://www.theartstory.org/movement-symbolism.htm accessed 24/12/2016
5. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Symbolism_(arts) accessed 24/12/2016
6. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/symb/hd_symb.htm accessed 24/12/2016
7. http://dpshots.com/photo-inspiration/conceptual-photography.html accessed 24/12/2016
8. http://www.redwoodvisualarts.org/honors-photo-symbols--meaning.html accessed 24/12/2016