I’ve watched two programmes about photographic history in the past few weeks. The first was BBC Four’s The Age Of The Image which was fronted by James Fox and was a four part series about “how the power of the image has transformed the world” (and which included film and some art as well). The second was the same channel’s Lucy Worsley's Royal Photo Album in which she aired her theory that the British royal family has survived by “harnessing the power of photography”.
These are major claims but what I thought was really striking about these programmes was their format. I start off from my own personal TV history baseline which is the historian AJP Taylor. In the 1960s and 70s he often appeared lecturing on television. He would simply stand in front of the camera, without any notes, and start talking. Even as a youngster I thought it was pretty impressive. Here is an early example. His style relied really on the power of the spoken word. It also relied on a certain level of concentration and imagination on the part of the viewer.
Fast forward to today and you find that TV history is almost entirely visual. The programmes are very much part of the process that they are describing. When Lucy Worsley wants to talk about Cecil Beaton’s revolutionary portraits of the Queen what does she do? Here’s what she does.
She recreates one with herself as Queen.
When Dr James Fox wants to talk about prehistoric paintings at Chauvet Cave what does he do? Here’s what he does.
There’s no need but he and his team go there. (Whatever happened to voiceovers?)
Nothing, but nothing, is left to our imagination.
Not only are our screens filled by this hyperreal, hypercolourful digital imagery - we now have an extra ingredient: music. Music! Pop; classical, electronic: you name it and you can almost certainly find it as an almost incessant aural backdrop to this visual stimulation.
And while history in AJP Taylor’s time appears to have been roughly chronological it has become curiously disjointed by the time it has reached our 21st century screens. The approach now is thematic; time is chopped into bundles and we leap back and forth over the years dizzyingly.
Where does this leave language, the traditional purveyor of history? Languishing a poor third, I’m afraid. It’s a pity. Language here is reduced to a kind of outlier, an audible but distant stimulus to which we might turn when the music and the colour and the presenter threaten to bore or overwhelm us: a sort of handrail on the moving platform of visual and aural stimulation.
James Fox, talking about Google maps, says at one point that once pictures were of reality but now the picture is reality. As a remark it a bit of a commonplace these days, I’m afraid – and perhaps more importantly, it isn’t necessarily true. The image represents reality only to those who have not been taught – or taught themselves - to deconstruct it. Reality –that which is – can never be replaced by a photograph or any other image. What I think he is not quite saying is that it’s that old devil digital again at work. It’s a highly promiscuous medium: it will go with anything. You could always put words, music and images together of course but with digital technology it has become so easy as to be almost a modern requirement. In the end, though, what you get is porridge.
The AJP Taylor lectures were originally broadcast by ATV who billed them as an experiment: “Can a brilliant historian, talking about a fascinating subject, hold the attention of a television audience of millions for half an hour?” they asked. Here’s the great man triumphantly proving, in my view anyway, that he could.
