One of those words…
\Jux`ta*po*si”tion\, n. [L. juxta near + positio position: cf. F. juxtaposition. See Just, v. i., and Position.] A placing or being placed in nearness or contiguity, or side by side; as, a juxtaposition of words.
Of the many things (or few things depending on my perspective) that I remember from being an undergraduate is this interesting word. I don’t recall my original introduction to it but it became an important word in my vocabulary as I evolved into my senior thesis in photography where the idea of placing one photograph next to another began to fascinate me.
It is a simple premise really. Place any photograph next to another and things change – one affects the other. My initial interest began with graphic relationships – I referred to how these juxtaposed images “echoed” one another. But it was my art history professor who changed everything when he referred to one of these juxtapositions as a visual “poem.”
This was a major personal revelation for me. I realized that I had stumbled upon something that had a long history – the relationships between “objects” be they images, words, or sounds. Dada and Surrealism had taught me that but it had never clicked in my naive, innocent, and ignorant state.
These memories were recalled by preparing for a lecture about film editing for the next New Media class. It was then that I first realized the significance of narrative – the causality of juxtapositioning anything. It was pure research and experimentation on my part – “what happens if I put this before that…?”
Bordwell speaks of the four dimensions of editing in film as the relationships between shot A and shot B: graphic, rhythmic, spatial, and temporal. These are part of the many elements that make film such a unique medium. One might say this is the juxtapositioning of images.
But what about words and language? That word juxtapose helped illuminate the nature of poetry:
Graphic: crimson sky
Rhythmic: crimson skies at night
Spatial: vast crimson sky above
Temporal: the crimson sky morphed into darkness
Editing: the juxtapositioning of signs and symbols as an attempt to create or discover meanings. A significant element of narrative structure.
