Allegory in the Landscape

Allegory is everywhere; in prose, in art, in cartoons. Some individuals are better at it than the rest of us, for sure. Some forms of allegory are so obvious that they straddle the fine line between allegory and the literal, while other forms are so murky that they are difficult to decipher. Then there is the allegory paradox in which a work that is clearly allegorical is denied by the author to be so, re: J. R. R. Tolkein and "The Lord of the Rings". Pictorial allegory is most ascribed to the great reportage photographers the likes of which include Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gary Winogrand, and Sebastiao Salgado. There are others, though, like Chris Jordan whose photographs of junkyards act as allegory to highlight the consumerism of a capitalist society. Allegory in landscape photography is more difficult to accomplish for the simple reason that nature does not normally arrange itself in a fashion that facilitates the photographer's aim. Nevertheless, we have found allegory creeping in to some of our photographs for a while now, and quite by accident. For instance, the picture below can represent our present political governmental structure, or maybe Panday and Manning surrounded by the morass of their respective sycophants, or maybe it represents our twin island republic. Or we can go the route of Tolkein and reiterate that it is not allegory, but merely two trees and a lot of bush. (We just know that somebody is going to email us and state that the dead foreground stump represents poor old Winston Dookeran. Be prepared for cuss when we reply, eh.)





Below is a picture that is filled with allegory, at least to us, during this Divali season following a general election. Maybe you will see what we see. In essence, if more people took some time to see the allegories around us, we would have a different country, and a better government.





- November 2007