The Diptych (But Not Really)

Image pair. iPhone 7 Plus, taken last Tuesday. This one's still in progress, no pun intended.

Although it masquerades as being altrusitic and exalted, the Art World (cap-cap) is a lot about status. That's why we call pictures "images" now—because photo-based artworks that were not strictly straight photographs were called images to differentiate them, and the practice spread from there to all photographs presented as art in museums, and then soon, because it was clearly a marker of status, to all photographs. (I personally still prefer picture, a more specific and actually more dignified word. It will come back into fashion someday.)

Image pair. Pictures in the frame taken with a Contax 139Q and Carl Zeiss 35mm ƒ/2.8 lens on Kodak Plus-X and printed on Ilford Galerie, 1980s.

"Diptych" (dip-tick) simply means any two flat surfaces hinged in the middle. In the medieval world the format was common for many things, including decorated screens, wax writing tablets, and ecclesiastical devotional paintings. Because the word (and less frequently triptych, meaning three hinged panels) was frequently seen in museums, it came to be applied, for status-indicating purposes, to any discrete pair of, yes, images presented side by side. Unfortunately for the status-mongers, the proper word for two separate pictures presented together is really just the plain, unadorned word "pair."

I've always liked working with image pairs, I think because I love photobooks so much. I know Ralph Gibson works very hard to find the right image pairs for facing pages, and one of the reasons I love Paul Caponigro's The Wise Silence so much is the way pictures on facing pages in that book work together—something Paul and his then-wife, the distinguished book designer Eleanor Morris Caponigro, worked on very deliberately.

Mike Johnston, Berkeley, 2015. Fuji X-T1 and XF 14mm ƒ/2.8.

It's both an easier and a more difficult way to work—easier because sometimes pictures which aren't quite enough alone can inform and enrich each other and become more than the sum of the two, and more difficult because sometimes the proper pairing can be elusive.

One thing I've found over the years is that it's visual work. That is, you might have an idea about which two pictures will work together as a pair, but it's not until you simply see them together that you really know. And then, as with all pictures, it takes living with them for a few days to know if you've got something or not. So it's best to work with small workprints. You could also work out a way of doing it on the computer, of course. However you do it, don't do it in your head—the work is done with the eyes.

John Paul Caponigro, Uyuni, Bolivia, 2012, an iPhone image, and Paul Caponigro, Frosted Window, Revere, Massachusetts, 1957, a view camera film photograph, printed together on one 17x22" sheet. A TOP Print Offer from 2013. (Pairing by Paul.)

As with all editing, sometimes things you really want to work just don't, and sometimes visual combinations you don't suspect will work, do. It's fun. And very satisfying, when it works.

Try it!

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

hugh crawford: "I once bought a half frame camera specifically to make diptychs.

"Currently I'm on a nonatych binge (if that's Greek to you it just means nine images or whatever). Since I'm laying out over 750 of them for the Jamie Livingston book.

"This one just blows me away."

Comments

[James]

Mike, For those of us that really like picture pairs, check out David Bailey's book "If We Shadows" If you don't have it - you need it.
A few used ones are available on Amazon at bargain prices.

[Maggie Osterberg]

Way back in the 1980s, I did a set of paired Polaroid Spectra pictures, all of them titled, "Before & After."

Some were corny, arty, obviously student work- see: apple. apple with bite taken out of it. But a few were kind of interesting, like when I would photograph something at the beginning of a season and then at the end.

It's a bit of a cheater's way to match images, but it was fun and it taught me that just because your photo is ostensibly of the same thing, they don't always work together.

[Mark Kinsman]

The pictures from that Mike Johnston guy are pretty good. You ought to feature more of his work, ... but ask permission first.

[Dave_lumb]

British photographer Sophie Green has used pairs in a number of projects.

e.g. http://www.sophiegreenphotography.com/gypsy-gold/

I've done it myself a time or two. I also like to make longer sequences and grids of pictures.

Somewhere, Martin Parr said, "I never think of photographs as being individual. Always as a group."

All too often photographers think only in terms if single images. What might be called 'iconic images' these days. When in reality the pictures which photographers are remembered for are often taken from a body of work.

[Thomas Rink]

I agree 100% with everything said in this post. Finding two or more pictures that "sing" together is often something like an "Eureka" moment for me. For this reason, I don't quite understand why most photobooks only have pictures on the recto pages (the ones on the right side) and verso left blank. Probably because (western?) viewers look at the recto pages first?

Best, Thomas

[Ricardo Silva Cordeiro]

This post made me remember to look once more at one of my favourite dyptich photo-projects: "Collected Short Stories" by Daniel Blaufuks (which is one of the greatest contemporary portuguese photographers).

His website is kind of a mess, but here's a direct link to the project (click the ">" to advance to the next pictures):
www.danielblaufuks.com/webnew/stories/one.html

By the way Mike,your Berkeley dyptich really caught my attention, made me want to see more. Is it part of a project?

[Andrew Molitor]

I admit that the use of the word "image" sets my teeth on edge. I can practically smell the pipe smoke and hear the labored attempts at Received Pronunciation when I see the word "image" used to mean "photo" or "picture"

Which is horribly unfair of me, most people use the word because lots of people use the word.

[cdembrey]

Picture, to me, conjures up an image of pen-and-ink drawings, linocut prints and water-colors. Never photographs ... YMMV.

[Peter]

Pretty easy to see this effect in Lightroom, just use the compare mode and select the pictures from the film strip. You may need to use Collections to get the images you require.

[Dave in NM]

A while back, I found that quite a few of my pictures were looking like single exposure triptychs. I tend to see horizontally, so I’ve always gravitated toward wider lenses, as they provide me with a more “normal” field of view. This same propensity leads to vertical arrays of horizontal elements, rather than horizontal arrays of vertical elements. Hence,the triptychs...

And by the way Mike, I’m with you on pictures versus images. Images just sounds so pretentious.

[Herman]

A multitick or multitych or whatever-

[John]

Michael Marten

Seascapes around the UK, at low and high tide.

Excellent pictures, though the equally fine book is largely sold out.

http://www.michaelmarten.com/gallery.php?catNo=2&gallNo=2&photoNo=146

[Frank Gorga]

While we are on the topic of language...

From the caption to your first photo in this post: "Image pair. iPhone 7 Plus, taken last Tuesday.".

I much prefer the verb "make" vs. "take" in this usage. In my view, "make" is simply a much more accurate description of the process than "take".

As for "image" vs. "picture"...

I prefer the term "photograph". Both "image" and "picture" are too broad; referring to many things other than the product of a camera.

As for Herman's multitych... wonderful!

Lastly, one of my own diptychs (made in Oct 2016)...

Same school yard fence, roughly 100 feet apart.