Texture Photography

Texture is seen every day, whether we are paying attention or not, and as explained by Barthes, “everyday culture could be analysed in terms of the language of communication (visual and verbal)” (Wells, 2015). The word texture comes from the Latin words textere or textus and means “to weave and make” or the “style or texture of a material”. The photographic texture consists of things like a photograph’s grain, details, patterns, and contrasts within a photo (Petit and Tollance, 2014, 2). It is said that texture is a photograph’s “flesh” or “the writing of light”, and texture in a picture can work the same way as the text does on a page. As a literary text, the photographic texture communicates something to a viewer or “reader” of an image (Petit and Tollance, 2014, 2).

Images captured by photographers such as Ansel Adams, Alex Stoddard, Steve McCurry, and Sebastiao Salgado demonstrate how we are surrounded by texture. These established photographers have paved their own paths for becoming the idols of photography, whether for portrait photography, colour photography, black and white photography, or even narrative portraiture. Many of the photographs created by these artists have some use of texture included within them. And without that texture, the images would not have the same effect on the viewer.

Therefore, “small shapes, lines or tonal areas repeated over an area of a photograph are visually organised as a pattern. A pattern of extremely small areas of shape, line or tone is recognised as texture” (Warren, 2003, 154). Throughout the images, an interpretation of texture is made. Essentially the audience is meant to recognise and understand that textures appear everywhere around us, in people, animals, different environments, and objects. The result of his is what has been captured through the lens.

This Griffith University project is a group collaboration between Trude Furuly, Orlando (Vergard) Hansen, and Samantha Potts.