Relationships

If all writing were reduced to the recording of facts, it would still reflect selectivity, interpretation, and subjectivity. Which would in turn reflect values and give rise to the construction of meaning. It is no different with photography, which only appears to be limited to the recording of facts.

All photographs are about relationships. These include the relationship between the photographer and subject matter, which defines the subject of an image; between the photographer and the medium itself, which affects the interpretation and expression of the subject; and between the viewer and the image itself, which incorporates the viewer/subject matter relationship and the viewer/subject relationship.

This is so even when, as in the vast majority of encounters between viewers and photographs, the viewer imagines that he or she is looking through a window and seeing the subject matter directly, that an image is hardly even involved and certainly not worth noticing in its own right. Which overlooks the fact that the process of making an image reflects selectivity, interpretation, and subjectivity, and that the image therefore reflects values and gives rise to the construction of meaning. A photograph can easily represent the appearance of a thing, but that does not ensure that either the meaning of the thing or the meaning of the photograph will be self-evident.

There is no such thing as a photograph without meaning. We may not recognize or understand or care about a given image’s potential meaning(s), but that is our own failing or choice. Even to ignore something, to consider it not worth paying attention to, is a decision based on a preference to ignore the possibilities of meaning, or an inability to perceive and value such possibilities.

Also:

“Much of what happens to us in life is nameless because our vocabulary is too poor.”

-John Berger

A corollary to this might be: We learn to limit ourselves to experiences we can name. Which is to say, experiences with which we are already familiar. We come to believe that these are the only experiences available to us. It is an easy step from there, and it is the step on which markets depend, to believe that the only experiences available to us, and therefore the only ones we seek, are those we can buy. Art is one of the most powerful means for refuting this blinkered assumption.