Chapter 2

Thinking photography beyondthe visual?

Elizabeth Edwards

The sensory photograph

In this photograph by Roslyn Poignant, taken in Arnhem Land, Australia, in1992, Frank Gurrmanamana sings one of a series of Jambich manikay songs,which are best glossed as sacred history songs. This he does in response to aseries of Axel Poignant’s photographs of the rom ceremony, holding one ofthe images in his hand, and matching the appropriate verse in the series tothe image. 1 In this way, he engages with and reinforces his relationship withhis lineage and ancestors. The verbal imagery of the songs mirrors the visualimagery of the indexical trace of the rom pole motifs, blurring the distinctionbetween the two (Poignant 1996: 23). But the embodied interaction with thephotograph is extended beyond the visual as Frank Gurrmanamana uses thephotographs themselves as clapping sticks to accompany his singing, holdingthem in his hands, beating them rhythmically with his fingers, recalling thesound of the clapping stick and its significance. 2 This photograph, and the use of the photograph within it, encapsulate themulti-sensory and intersensory nature of photographs which I am going todiscuss in this chapter. I want to consider ways in which we might extend ourunderstanding of photographs beyond the visual itself, and thus extend ourtheory of photography beyond the dominant semiotic, linguistic and instru-mental models to a more strongly phenomenological approach, in which mate-riality and the sensual play a central role in how photographs are understood.Throughout this chapter my concern is with the sensory engagement withthe physical photograph as a material object. Digital environments and tech-nologies have, of course, radically impacted on much that I discuss. However,the argument is not only historical. While the means of creating and accessingimages may have shifted from analogue to digital, and ways of storage shiftedfrom shoe boxes to CDs, there still remains a cultural desire for the materialobject to fulfil specific social functions. Further, the image on the computerscreen still demands levels of sensory and embodied engagement: the slightflicker of the screen, the tap of the keyboard, the physical movement of oper-ating the mouse and the social networks of image exchange (see for example