A Photograph of Nevill

[Erik Narramore]

I proposed on another thread that we can conclude a lot about somebody just from their voice.  Here I would like to put forward the idea that a photograph can be a window into someone's soul and troubles.  Photography is a modern invention - the first photograph was taken, I think, in the 1820s, and the first daguerreotype was available from, I believe, the 1840s onwards.  At the dawn of photography, there may well have been a sense that the action of capturing a photographic image had a transcendent solemnity and eternity about it.  It was forever.  Little known today is that, back then, it was common for middle-class families to pose with the bodies of dead family members - especially the corpses of their recently-deceased children, infant mortality being very high at that time.

But the camera can lie.  Those of us who cast a critical eye over the evidence in the Bamber case know this all too well.  Thus, photography is an art as much as a technical science, and the 'art' part is, if anything, harder than the science part: we must learn how to interpret.  Furthermore, the art and the technics are interrelated: mood can be conveyed through adjustments to depth of field.  A shallow depth of field can enhance the emotional intensity of an image that captures even the most inexpressive person: one thinks of the bokeh effect, for instance.  A close-up angle can hide unflattering features.  And so on.

In principle, creative manipulation is nothing new, for it applies to all personalised art and always has.  We might further say that art itself is manipulation.  The famous English portraitist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, put it conservatively: "In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature."  Sir Joshua was surely under-stating the creative potential of his craft.  Yet let us now consider 1980s technology and compare it to the finer craft available to Sir Joshua, who artfully daubed clay pigments on hemp canvases in the 18th. century.  In the hands of an amateur, a simple SLR camera could only capture what was there - the What You See Is What You Get principle governed.  In simple amateur photography, the manipulation was, and to a large extent still is, a priori: in the arrangement of the scene of portraiture or family setting, or perhaps in the case of females especially, in the donning of flattering couture and use of make-up.  The more complex art of technical photographic manipulation, of which we may suspect Essex Police, is a matter for knowledgeable technicians and specialists.

Back in the days of film cameras, people typically posed for photographs, or engaged in studied or playful spontaneity in the knowledge that the photographer was close-by to capture it.  This was especially so in the intimate context of the family, where there was a wish to catch everybody's good side and also convey a situation of happiness.  The Jubilee photo of all the family - Nevill, Jeremy, Colin, Sheila and June looking happy - for me brings to mind Shakespeare in Hamlet Act 5, Scene 2: "For, by the image of my cause, I see / The portraiture of his."  A desire to convey normalcy, which on that occasion seems successful.

The exception was children at play.  Children can't or won't always consent to being snapped and may not understand the significance to parents of capturing precious moments of a child's life.  Photographs of children, whether on the climbing frame, in the bath, on a sled in the snow, or at the breakfast table, might show laughter, contentment, or tears and tantrums.  This is because family photography is adult-driven and very young children are implicitly treated as pre-emotional in photography: their negative reactions are not perceived as manifestations of formed feelings or ideas in a more adult sense.

When in adolescence the minor reacts with insolent frowns to the photographer's intrusion - as Sheila does in a garden photo with June and Jeremy does in a family table photograph - this is symptomatic of rebellion, and again tolerated.  Sheila was corralled into posing with June in an effort at portraying familial normalcy.  In Jeremy's case, one senses that the insolence at the table was the result of some phasic mood or juvenile flare-up, perhaps a reaction to a paroxysm of Nevill's or June's, in turn initiated by some error or omission, or inappropriate remark, on Jeremy's part. A mature adult in a similar situation, even under stress, would smile politely or faintly, as June does once or twice, the insecurity, irritation or annoyance only surmisable to someone knowledgeable of the family dynamics or otherwise perceptive in such matters.

In today's world of the digital camera and handheld devices, perhaps there is a greater and more faithful spontaneity, and with it a greater sense of emotional intrusiveness.  The adult can now be captured in isolated moments of vestigial insolence, but with this new technology are also certain technical limitations - such as difficulty in capturing a shallow depth of field - that diminish the emotional subtlety of what we see.  Digital miniaturisation has also resulted in the phenomenon of the 'selfie': a contrived self-portrait that signifies the poser's desire to influence how he or she is perceived through the projection of an expressive mood in portraiture.  Nevill was a straight-forward man.  Manly.  Serious.  We think of him as gerontified, but he also had a lighter side to him, and it is not out of the question that a hypothetical Nevill living in the 2010s, even if old, might take a fun selfie or have a Facebook account, in which he shares mainstream political/current affairs posts with Ann Eaton and Karen Boutflour, expressing his enthusiasm for Brexit perhaps, or perhaps his dislike of it, and maybe also uses social media to keep in touch with some of the Bambers we don't hear about.  June absolutely would not.  Nevill might.

The photo below of Nevill interests me.  We see it a lot.  It's appeared in one or two publications and in at least one documentary on the case, but nobody asks about it.  It's clearly a focal point of a larger picture.  I wonder who took it?  I wonder what exactly Nevill was doing?  Was he working or out shooting or what?  Did Jeremy take the picture?  I have something in common with Jeremy: a liking for inappropriate humour and a tendency towards teasing.  This gives me some limited insight.  I can imagine Jeremy would like to fool around with a camera.  Did he?  The photo seems to indicate a spontaneous context, and Nevill's clothing, or what we see of it, and the situation, seem workmanlike.  It's as if the family patriarch is out working, or doing something else serious, and Jeremy is somehow there too and is messing around and starts photographing him.

Look at Nevill's face and the way he is looking at the camera.  Actually, he isn't really looking at the camera at all.  He is looking at the person behind the camera, and it seems as if his attention has been caught by the mystery photographer.  To me, Nevill's is the inscrutable expression of a taciturn man, but with an element of slight quizzical annoyance.  It's as if he's saying, 'Oh, it's you again!'