Signs are everywhere. They can give us important information or directions, but can also be used to make visual jokes–like wordplay, except with images.
These photos were taken this year, some of them over the past month. They are meant to show the ambiguity and humour of signs.
For decades, prank photos have been popular on April Fool’s Day. They typically appear in a newspaper or online with an alarming or puzzling caption like “Wisconsin State Capital Collapses” or “Bicycle Flies Over Amsterdam.”
Before Photoshop, the process of faking a photo was more complex, and could involve multiple exposures, airbrushing, hand retouching, and other composite photo techniques. This usually required a lot of work in the darkroom. Most early April Fool’s prank photos seem crude by today’s standards, but sometimes they were pretty slick–as in the 1926 German photo of a “Triple Decker City Bus.”
Some pranks are evergreen and may even become expected. U.S. political writer Andrew Sullivan, who now writes for New York magazine but for years had his own blog (the Dish), celebrated April Fool’s Day every year by RickRolling his readers. Yes: every single year. Andrew has a New York column scheduled to appear this Friday; check it out to see whether he’ll do it once again.
Where photos are concerned, digital technology immediately made it so much easier and faster to manipulate and retouch for effect. One of the best known of recent years is a photo spoof that appeared in the April edition of Popular Photography in 2005. Dorothea Lange’s famous picture of a migrant mother was given a digital makeover so that she would fit in better with magazine advertising. True, it was a clever commentary on the superficiality of retouching; but it hit a nerve and produced hundreds of comments, both positive and negative. (Many people found it more demeaning to the subject than funny.)
Do keep in mind that a prank is just that. Once a year we are allowed to take some liberties. If you’re the person doing the fooling, be sure you’re not stepping on anyone else’s dignity in a misguided attempt to be humourous.
And if you’re the one who gets fooled, remember to enjoy it. Of course you’re the smartest person in the room! Obviously! So if someone is able to put something over on you on April 1, appreciate their cleverness and laugh it off. You can always start planning right away for next year.
from the series: Wish You Were Here
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Martin Parr‘s photographs are known for their whimsical, sardonic wit. In a recent blog post I mentioned the painter René Magritte, who consistently challenged perceptions of reality by showing ordinary objects out of their usual contexts (by, for example, putting a silk mask on an apple, or having a train emerge from a fireplace).
Parr also finds humour in everyday objects and situations. In article in The Telegraph, he noted, “Part of what I’ve done is to make the everyday look more interesting.” The photos British photographer Martin Parr takes are known for gently satirizing people and their cultures. The viewers can be left with ambiguous reactions—not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Creating humour in photos is a difficult task: if it’s too subtle, no one gets the joke; if it’s too overt, it isn’t very funny.
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Photo tip: the key to many good photographs is patience—observing the scene and waiting for something interesting to happen. Often it’s something behind the scenes that produces the witty photo.
Marching Band, Toronto; 1983 is from the series: Toronto Days
Animals are unpredictable creatures. With anything unpredictable (motion; changing light) you’ll want to keep timing in the front of your mind while photographing.
Animals, both willing and unwilling, have been the subject of photographs since the earliest daguerreotype in 1839. Capturing an image of an animal was a tricky business back then, when exposure times of 10 to 60 seconds were needed. These days digital cameras and smart phones make the process much easier, but getting a good photo is still tricky.
W.C. Fields famously said, “Never work with animals or children.” Photographer Elliott Erwitt, on the other hand, said, “I like working with children and animals. They are more obedient than most grownups. . . and they don’t ask for prints.” Erwitt has a unique way of getting humourous and idiosyncratic photos of dogs, yet manages to show our human connection with them. Many of his dog photos show people interacting with animals, and timing seems to be the critical component.
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Photo tip: Try observing an animal for some time before taking a photo; often the interaction with people makes a great moment. Stay ready to press the button.