Edited by Steve Bamlett, Sunday, 27 May 2018, 18:02
In what instances might we accept
photographs as evidence or accurate records?
This is a very loaded question to which, after working through
this week’s material, you really want to answer that ‘in no instance should a
photograph be accepted as evidence of the meaning of an event that has really
happened’. This seems to be the point of Mandel and Sultan’s art-joke in their
book of photographic documents named ‘Evidence’. The title begs the question
since the work itself makes us question whether our assumptions about what
evidence is contain a lot of unexamined and hard-to-validate assumptions. Even
the look of their work in Mandel’s words has this effect: ‘It looks like it's
kind of a library binding, and it's made so that you would think that it is
some kind of evidentiary document.’ The point is we learn that we are being
duped. We assume a photograph evidences a truth and its potential meanings but
the book will puzzle us and generate meanings quite out of any range intended
by the original photographer. Likewise, Meiselas challenges one narrow feminist
conception of ‘carnival strippers’ by allowing new meaning to be generated by
her images: they do show us ‘what is there’ but we are challenged to find a
simple meaning – not least inj the women themselves who are more than just
‘victims’ of the male gaze.
What makes photography’s
relationship to truth so complicated?
Papageorge’s
comparison of his and Winograd’s images of a mixed race couple and their pet
monkeys is fascinating. The latter’s image compresses into its frames ideas
about children and parents that arise from the juxtaposition of the monkey and
an ambient child holding his father’s hand at the back of the monkey, via some
unacknowledged but deeply-culturally ingrained racism in white viewers. To see
this picture then is to see ‘racism’ in action although it is not ‘evidence’ of
it. The point is that documents show us something complex, full of multiple
(and sometimes contradictory) meanings. This is true of Atget’s use of the term
‘documents for artists’. Meanings come from all directions and I think Atget
knew that they would and that not all of them would be under his control. This
is the case of Mandel and Sultan – where juxtaposed images ‘infect’ each other
with meaning.
In what
ways do a photographer’s artistic choices and point of view affect the meaning
of a picture?
The above does not say that the
way a picture is ‘made’ (framed, cropped, focused, printed) does not change
meaning – it does – as we see in comparing Winograd and PapaGeorge where the
latter’s pictures is somehow much simpler in semiotic terms. It is also to say
that even in less conscious hands the photographs framing and other features
however unplanned or intended for another function will begin to take on
functions of which its photographer was totally ‘innocent’. I think Meiselas is
very wise here in giving up some of her control of choices to her ‘subjects’ –
the carnival strippers. Their desire for ‘portraits’ imposes an intention on
her oeuvre that feels alien to Meiselas’ open feminism but which is in the end reconcilable
with that feminism – since the women are not just subjected to the photographer’s
gaze (in this sense just as they are to male gaze) but also able to make new
meanings out of that event that have autonomy from both gazing men and the female
photographer.
MoMA Photography: Photo as 'evidence' Week 3
In what instances might we accept photographs as evidence or accurate records?
This is a very loaded question to which, after working through this week’s material, you really want to answer that ‘in no instance should a photograph be accepted as evidence of the meaning of an event that has really happened’. This seems to be the point of Mandel and Sultan’s art-joke in their book of photographic documents named ‘Evidence’. The title begs the question since the work itself makes us question whether our assumptions about what evidence is contain a lot of unexamined and hard-to-validate assumptions. Even the look of their work in Mandel’s words has this effect: ‘It looks like it's kind of a library binding, and it's made so that you would think that it is some kind of evidentiary document.’ The point is we learn that we are being duped. We assume a photograph evidences a truth and its potential meanings but the book will puzzle us and generate meanings quite out of any range intended by the original photographer. Likewise, Meiselas challenges one narrow feminist conception of ‘carnival strippers’ by allowing new meaning to be generated by her images: they do show us ‘what is there’ but we are challenged to find a simple meaning – not least inj the women themselves who are more than just ‘victims’ of the male gaze.
What makes photography’s relationship to truth so complicated?
Papageorge’s comparison of his and Winograd’s images of a mixed race couple and their pet monkeys is fascinating. The latter’s image compresses into its frames ideas about children and parents that arise from the juxtaposition of the monkey and an ambient child holding his father’s hand at the back of the monkey, via some unacknowledged but deeply-culturally ingrained racism in white viewers. To see this picture then is to see ‘racism’ in action although it is not ‘evidence’ of it. The point is that documents show us something complex, full of multiple (and sometimes contradictory) meanings. This is true of Atget’s use of the term ‘documents for artists’. Meanings come from all directions and I think Atget knew that they would and that not all of them would be under his control. This is the case of Mandel and Sultan – where juxtaposed images ‘infect’ each other with meaning.
In what ways do a photographer’s artistic choices and point of view affect the meaning of a picture?
The above does not say that the way a picture is ‘made’ (framed, cropped, focused, printed) does not change meaning – it does – as we see in comparing Winograd and PapaGeorge where the latter’s pictures is somehow much simpler in semiotic terms. It is also to say that even in less conscious hands the photographs framing and other features however unplanned or intended for another function will begin to take on functions of which its photographer was totally ‘innocent’. I think Meiselas is very wise here in giving up some of her control of choices to her ‘subjects’ – the carnival strippers. Their desire for ‘portraits’ imposes an intention on her oeuvre that feels alien to Meiselas’ open feminism but which is in the end reconcilable with that feminism – since the women are not just subjected to the photographer’s gaze (in this sense just as they are to male gaze) but also able to make new meanings out of that event that have autonomy from both gazing men and the female photographer.