What is it?

<p>" a similarly composed shot by Garry Winogrand"</p>

<p>Must be a masterpiece then.</p>

<p>Jeez, I just thought it was just a snap of three girls doing nothing, saying nothing...other than the conjecture driven into the work.</p>

<p>But then we can tell a story, play with words, and turn the banal into.....crap.</p>

<p>Or dare I say Art.</p>

<p>I suppose it is her terms. I mean are the models who pose nude involved in a ritual murder/suicide? But of course I get her point. In putting her quote up for examination my point was more to show the artifice of language as metadata that is limited in how it can get to the meat of the thing. Sontag, in my perception, missed her mark by a measure. </p>

<p>Abu Ghraib: we had images where words would have been less effective. But how much more/or less effective would have been a sound only recording of the torture? Would it have been more gut wrenching, more real, with the images provoked, like in old time radio, from the mind of the listener? I say that because just looking isn't an attempt at communication as were the pictures, as would have been a sound recording. So I don't see much difference between the objectification that takes place in our minds when we look at a subject, that its all that different from the objectification and other non-truths we tell ourselves every day all without ritualizing our misunderstandings/understandings in photographic form.</p>

<blockquote><b>Charles W wrote:</b><p>One other point about Sontag's wording. Murder isn't murder unless it's intentional.</blockquote>

<p>

Redefining words used by another to mean something they did not intend will never provide valid understanding or discussion. One definition of murder requires intent to kill, but others do not. Typically, for example, intend to commit a felony makes an accidental death a first degree murder.

<p>

Your entire discussion was based on a false premisis, and is therefore invalid on its face.

<p>

The moral is that it is important to look for what people are saying, rather than ways to twist what was said in a way that can be faulted.

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Charles W wrote:</b><p>Thanks to Frank for all and for "She was describing changes to cultures across the globe that had resulted from massive distribution of imagery. (And that was before the Internet!)"</blockquote><p>

 

You can be frank, and say that I wrote that.

<blockquote><b>Allen Herbert wrote:</b><p>

" a similarly composed shot by Garry Winogrand"

 

Must be a masterpiece then.</blockquote>

<p>

Well, certainly the Winogrand image is thought to be exactly that. The link posted in the other thread, by Sarah Fox, wasn't a very good representation of Garry Winogrand's "Untitled (Historionics on a Bench)" image though. <p>

 

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-BQ444_winogr_G_20130911182858.jpg

 

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Allen Herbert wrote:</b><p>

Jeez, I just thought it was just a snap of three girls doing nothing, saying nothing...other than the conjecture driven into the work.<p>

 

But then we can tell a story, play with words, and turn the banal into.....crap.

<p>

Or dare I say Art.

<p>

</blockquote>

<p>

Well... there is no accounting for taste, good/bad/indifferent/yours/mine/theirs.

<p>

I separate what I like from what I think is good art though. The image of the girls (and for that matter Winogrand's image) are not photography that I particularly like. I agree that the photographs both make objects of the females in ways that are not compimentary and also perhaps not fair to them. I shoot a lot of people pictures, some of which is Street Photography, and I have never wanted to make a picture like either of those.

<p>

That said, they are both very good photography. They are each framed with extreme care to emphasize the point the photographer wanted to make, and were selected because the composition shows an instant in which the women appear as the objects the photographer wanted to show. How well that was done is what makes each an example of very good photography, and the proof is in the pudding: Look at the conversation and emotion here on Photo.net that the Greenfield image has caused! And just look at the fact that Garry Winogrand took his picture in 1964, published it in a book in 1975, and here it is 2013 and that image is currently touring art museums as an exhibition based on Winogrand's 1975 book "Women are Beautiful".

<p>

It seems that whether objectifying the sexuality of women is or not a good thing, it absolutely is a way to get attention.

<p>Floyd - the attribution was there, thanking you for: "Quoted text." I thought my attribution was clear, though it could have been clearer.</p>

<p>My final point about murder, in order to be murder, requiring intent was my final point, an afterthought. It was a final point and not a foundation for my argument. Nevertheless, in one reading allowed by dictionary definitions, subliminal murder is a contradiction in terms. By other dictionary definitions of murder, it is not a contradiction in terms. How do we know from Sontag which meaning she intended? I fault her for lack of clarity.</p>

<p>My main point was that sublimation by definition is a conscious, intended process. Subliminal processes, on the other hand, by definition occur without our being aware of them. With that in mind, let's look again at Sontag's critical sentence fragment:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Sublimation of the gun is conscious <em>by definition. </em>Unintended murder can't be correctly compared to intended sublimation of gun to camera. Intended redirection of energy into a camera from a gun can't be 'just as' an unintended act, subliminal murder. For her to make such a mistake, I have to assume she used her own private meanings of sublimation and subliminal to make her point. She used the wrong words. Sublimation isn't subliminal, the first intended, the second outside our field of awareness. Sublimation can't be subliminal by definition.</p>

<p>I'm not redefining words. I'm looking in a dictionary, finding the meaning of words, and then asking myself and others if the writer, Sontag, used those words correctly to convey her intended meaning. I can't glean her intended meaning in that sentence because of her poor choice of words. The issue is, what should her words mean to us, what can we agree the meaning is based on definitions of the words she used. Based on word definitions that are not my own, but are dictionary definitions, her words make no sense to me. Anyone want to point me to material that defines sublimation as subliminal?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Is it possible that Sontag was recognizing our predisposition to being aware of symbols themselves without necessarily being aware of the ramifications or deeper meanings of those symbols? Humans can be that clueless.</p>

<p>Mind you, I don't know whether Sontag would have intended this reading, but it might be an interesting way to look at it. Pure speculation on my part.</p>

<p>Maybe it's easy for us to be conscious of a camera as a gun or a gun as a penis, for example. But how conscious are we of the next step, of what the camera as gun or the gun as penis means. Have we really internalized the power of these symbols or do we just take them for granted? Maybe Sontag is saying just that. We are conscious of the symbol itself, so we use the camera as we might a gun, but are we conscious of what that symbolism or use actually means or says? We feel the power of the camera as we would a gun but we don't have a clue about the "murders" we can potentially commit with them.</p>

<p>Just listen to discussions about guns and gun violence in the U.S. A lot of people are only conscious of a gun protecting them. They haven't got a clue that the very same implement they think is a means of protection is a weapon of murder.</p>

<p>A camera may give us a sense of POWER. In that sense we sublimate the gun part. And we are aware of that sublimation. It is a subliminal murder, however, because we haven't got a clue of what the power can result in.</p>

<p>Looking again at the PN nudes. Many of those photographers hold that camera as they would their own dick. What they couldn't acceptably do in a more typical human interchange they know full well they can get away with while behind the protective shield of the camera.</p>

<p><strong>sublimation:</strong> <em>"socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are consciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior"</em></p>

<p>Being with and directing younger, beautiful, thin, nude women is transformed into acceptable behavior by the presence of the camera. The camera/gun provides the necessary power, or firepower. And the guys are well aware of this.</p>

<p>The murder (objectification/dehumanization?), however, is totally unconscious, subliminal. The same guys are clueless about this part.</p>

<p>I think she correctly understood 'subliminal' as unconscious. And so she probably thought, mistakenly, that sublimation was an unconscious process. Her intended meaning was probably: Because a camera is unconsciously a substitute gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder "- a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time."</p>

<p>By appropriate she probably means: to be expected (or occurring; or sadly found) in a sad, frightened time. Because she can't mean murder of any sort is appropriate.</p>

<p>I saw a show where Joseph Campbell wished he had never said "Follow your bliss." Maybe that sentence is one Sontag felt much the same way about.</p>

<p>As to her broader meanings, I haven't read her book and don't know that quote in context. Penis can be a symbol for creativity too. Freud tended to taint everything. There's a good comparison of Freud v Jung on sublimation here: http://www.therapyvlado.com/english/concept-of-sublimation-in-psychology-of-sigmund-freud-and-carl-gustav-jung/</p>

<p> </p>

Let me add emphasis to these quotes so that the context becomes obvious:

 

<blockquote><b>Charles W wrote:</b><p>

Thanks to <b>Frank</b> for all and for "She was describing changes to cultures across the globe that had resulted from massive distribution of imagery. (And that was before the Internet!)"</blockquote>

<p>

You must be frank, because I'm Floyd.

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Charles W wrote:</b><p><b>Floyd</b> - the attribution was there, thanking <b>you</b> for: "Quoted text." I thought my attribution was clear, though it could have been clearer.</blockquote>

<p>

What a fabulous example of why your analysis of Sontag's discussion is invalid!

<p>

You didn't use the right word, or even close, but you fully expect that what you said was still "clear". <b>Indeed it was too!</b> I knew you meant me, even if you said "Frank"! I'm not Frank, but <b>in context</b> it was still clear enough.

<p>

Yet you insist that Sontag's words have to use the precise definition you choose for those terms, even though it is very obvious from the context of her entire essay that she had meant them to mean something different. Worse yet you even admit her definitions are within reason.

<p>

Read what she said, not what you can argue against. Listen to her meaning, not your personal interpretation.

<p>

It isn't enough to just apply your interpretation of the words of a quote from Sontag. She wrote those essays

in the early/middle 1970's, and the meaning has been analyzed many times over in the more than 30 years since. It is a bit absurd to say that it isn't clear, when for more than 30 years everyone else has been able to agree on what she meant.

<p>

Argue for or against what she meant, and don't try to interpet her words other than as she did.

<p>Sorry Floyd, I hadn't noticed my mixing up of names and I'm glad you were able to know I meant you from context. Your added emphasis made me hone in on that, or I still might have missed it.</p>

<p>Man, I'm using the dictionary, not my personal meanings. Here is the first definition of murder from Merriam-Webster <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/murder">http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/murder</a> "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought". The other two definitions in that dictionary entry don't apply. Look at the other definitions, for subliminal, for sublimation. Those aren't my personal definitions that I provided. They are from the dictionary. If we have doubts about what a word means, we are supposed to look it up. I did.</p>

<p>I don't insist that Sontag use dictionary definitions of words, I expect her to. I read what Sontag wrote in those couple of sentences. I didn't read the rest of her essay. I don't know what she meant except from what she wrote in the material quoted here. You have the benefit of gleaning her meaning from the context of the entire essay. I don't have that advantage.</p>

<p>Cleaning up her text, pretending that I am her editor, I offered this translation of it:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Because a camera is unconsciously a substitute gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder "- a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Frank honestly, help me out. Does my edited version convey her intended meaning better than her original text, based on the broader contexts you possess from actually, unlike me, having read the entire essay? Please.</p>

<p>My point in bringing Sontag's sentence up in the first place was to offer that we use contexts to render meanings, sometimes correctly, but often incorrectly. For example, I think I've made a pretty good case for Sontag's sentence being self contradictory in its actual text. Others who know what she meant from other contexts fill in the meaning, know what she meant, even though she said it poorly, even to the point of not recognizing, when reading the actual text, that it was said poorly. Because our minds fill in the gaps. That was your point when I rendered your name wrong, that you knew what I meant anyway. Our minds work that way. It is a good thing. But when is it not a good thing? Well for one, when I try and point out some bad writing. That's not a good thing. But that's trivial compared to crossing the street without seeing a car because our mind wants us to see an empty street with no car coming. Or when we step into a river's water thinking that it was the same river yesterday as today, and then we drown because we saw a mirage of a river and not the river before us. Fred had asked if there was data and metadata and I was trying to explore how our abstraction of our experience in the form of words creates problems, creates a haze over the experiential where data and language just don't have much to do with each other. Just as your understanding of what Sontag wrote in that sentence isn't supported by the words she actually used in that sentence when writing it.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Charles, I didn't quite understand how your answer about data and metadata related to my question. Note that I asked it in the context of the difference between a thing and that same thing photographed, the thing being like data and same thing when photographed being like metadata. Your answer seemed to address Sontag's words but I don't understand how your answer actually relates to photos of things.</p>

<p>It's interesting to me that Winogrand's "thing photographed" doesn't work similarly in all walks of photography. When I look at his photos and lots of other photos, I get it completely. When I look at a lot of documentary work, it has importance but also pertains differently. It's important to note the difference between "reality" and documentary photography, which may have a slant, a bias, or downright prejudices. So Winogrand's is a good warning to be skeptical about confusing the photo with what it's a photo of. Nevertheless, most good documentary photography does suggest a strong connection between photo and reality. We glean a lot about the realities of the world (from different eras as well as our own, from faraway places in addition to where we live) from documentary work. I'd feel it safe to say that, while there's always a distinction between thing and thing photographed, there are also degrees of the perceived rift between them. When I see a photo that relies on timing, particularly photos where a confluence of events happens in one significant moment and others types of photos as well, part of my joy is knowing that these events took place. It's one of the exciting things about photos. Even photos that rely heavily on artifice, sometimes, depend on the link to reality in order for us to get what we get out of the artifice.</p>

<p>So, photography has this tension. To a great extent, it is built upon the realities we experience and yet there will always be the perspective (skepticism?) suggested by Winogrand's insightful statements.</p>

<p>Fred, without looking back for your exact question and contexts about data and meta data, here's what my thoughts were. The OP is What Is It. What is what? The photograph, the data. What get's in the way of our seeing and talking about what's in the photograph? Some observed that instead of the actual content of a photo, folks were free associating from their own personal experiences or moral views. Does language get in the way? Are our brains wired to tune data out and replace it with known content, language place holders, signs that aren't actual data and can be very different from the actual data?</p>

<p>I offered the coyote observer v coyote example, where an instinctive mistrust of that coyote's instability, partly coming, partly going, was seen not as instinct would see it, as calling for caution, but as the coyote wanting to play, or perhaps even 'recognizing' the observer. My mind played a trick on me when I didn't get Floyd's name correct. Folks seem to want to read that sentence as 'what Sontag meant' instead of looking precisely at what she said, the mind filling in contexts to turn nonsense text into sensible text. How is all that different from how we view a photograph? I think it is the same, that we have to, as you suggested earlier, learn to really look and that is difficult, our brains in part, wired against that effort. And I should say that lately, for a few months, I've been thinking about my own thoughts and language and wonder seriously if in their entirety they can in the future continue to serve me as accurate or true representations of what I have known as my world. I don't think so. I just want to throw it the entirety of that language and thought away, but don't know how really.</p>

<p><em>"Folks seem to want to 'what Sontag meant' instead of looking precisely at what she said, the mind filling in contexts. How is all that different from how we view a photograph?"</em></p>

<p>To me, it's very different from how the photo of the teenage girls was viewed.</p>

<p>When we "fill in" what Sontag's out-of-context words mean with more context from the essay originally containing those words, we are not free associating. We are carefully directly associating the words with the context in which they were spoken. We are relating <em>her own </em>words to <em>her other own </em>words and the greater ideas within which those few words were originally presented.</p>

<p>When, on the other hand, we free associate a specific picture of four teenage girls with our own teenagers or our own experiences of teenagers, we are relating a photo to <em>our own</em> context or experiences, not to the context in which the photo was taken or the context of the photographer's body of work which would be a more direct association for reading the photo itself (and more similar to looking at Sontag's essay in addition to the quotes).</p>

<p>I am not saying it's wrong or a bad idea to free associate with a photograph. I think it's a good thing and a pretty natural thing for people to do when looking at photos and art. But I think there's also something to be gained from looking carefully at the photo or painting itself as well. </p>

<p>A more comparable situation would not be to compare the out-of-context quotes of Sontag to a single photo but rather to compare the out-of-context quotes of Sontag to taking a single photo out of a series that contained it. One might choose to address such a photo as a singular photo and understand, judge, and assess it strictly on its singular merits. But, if the photographer intended it as part of a series, there could be a lot missed or a lot confused by extracting it from a series as if it were meant to be a singular photo.</p>

<blockquote><b>Charles W wrote</b><p>

Man, I'm using the dictionary, not my personal meanings. Here is the first definition of murder from Merriam-Webster http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/murder "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought". The other two definitions in that dictionary entry don't apply.

</blockquote>

<p>

That is not only cherry picking both the dictionary and the meaning, but you are implying more to that definition than is specified. The term "especially" clearly makes it non-exclusive, yet you've made that the focal point of your definition. Regardless, that isn't the correct definition to use anyway.

<p>

The number two definition reads:

<p>   <b>2</b><br />   

   a : something very difficult or dangerous <the traffic was murder><br />   

   b : something outrageous or blameworth <getting away with murder><br />   

<p>

And that is clearly more consistent with Sontag's usage. But to be even more clear, put the above in context by reading further down on the Merriam-Webster web page and review the meanings for the word "murder" when used as a verb. Then of course one might want to check other dictionaries too! A quick check at dict.com shows a variety of ways to explain how the word is typically used:<br />

<br />    "To destroy; to put an end to."

<br />    "To mutilate, spoil, or deform, as if with malice or cruelty; to mangel; as, to murder the king's English."

<p>The Oxford online dictionary at http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/murder defines is almost identically, with a slight variation in examples that might make it easier to relate with:

<br />      <i>noun</i>

<br />        the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another:

<br />               <i>the stabbing murder of an off-Broadway producer</i>

<br />               <i>he was put on trial for attempted murder</i>

<br />                  • <i>informal</i>  a very difficult or unpleasant task or experience:

<br />                               <i>my first job at the steel mill was murder</i>   

<p>It is clear that Sontag did not mean to literally commit the crime of murder; she meant to destroy the context of a person in the sense of the second definition, which you totally ignored, given by Merriam-Webster.<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Charles W wrote</b><p>

Look at the other definitions, for subliminal, for sublimation. Those aren't my personal definitions that I provided. They are from the dictionary. If we have doubts about what a word means, we are supposed to look it up. I did.</blockquote>

<p>

But they are the definitions <b> you choose</b>, not the ones being used by Sontag.<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Charles W wrote</b><p>

I don't insist that Sontag use dictionary definitions of words, I expect her to. I read what Sontag wrote in those couple of sentences. I didn't read the rest of her essay. I don't know what she meant except from what she wrote in the material quoted here. You have the benefit of gleaning her meaning from the context of the entire essay. I don't have that advantage.</blockquote>

Then stop using ignorance to abuse what she said! You've created a huge diversion here that murders this discusion!

Arguing about precise word usage in an essay you haven't read and particularly one that is nearly 40 years old and has been thoroughly hashed over for decades, including in later works by the author, is a waste of your time.

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Charles W wrote</b><p>

Cleaning up her text, pretending that I am her editor, I offered this translation of it:

<p>

Because a camera is unconsciously a substitute gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder "- a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time."

<p>

Frank honestly, help me out. Does my edited version convey her intended meaning better than her original text, based on the broader contexts you possess from actually, unlike me, having read the entire essay? Please.

<p>

My point in bringing Sontag's sentence up in the first place was to offer that we use contexts to render meanings, sometimes correctly, but often incorrectly. For example, I think I've made a pretty good case for Sontag's sentence being self contradictory in its actual text. Others who know what she meant from other contexts fill in the meaning, know what she meant, even though she said it poorly, even to the point of not recognizing, when reading the actual text, that it was said poorly. Because our minds fill in the gaps. That was your point when I rendered your name wrong, that you knew what I meant anyway. Our minds work that way. It is a good thing. But when is it not a good thing? Well for one, when I try and point out some bad writing. That's not a good thing. But that's trivial compared to crossing the street without seeing a car because our mind wants us to see an empty street with no car coming. Or when we step into a river's water thinking that it was the same river yesterday as today, and then we drown because we saw a mirage of a river and not the river before us. Fred had asked if there was data and metadata and I was trying to explore how our abstraction of our experience in the form of words creates problems, creates a haze over the experiential where data and language just don't have much to do with each other. Just as your understanding of what Sontag wrote in that sentence isn't supported by the words she actually used in that sentence when writing it.</blockquote>

<p>

Well, to be this guy Frank again, you haven't done what you say you did above. You have made it clear that as an editor you are a failure. You've changed both the meaning of her words and the style of presentation for no particular import. You didn't do it to improve what she said, but simply because you haven't understood what she said. It isn't her lack of ability to communicate, as certainly all other critical reviews of "On Photography" have understood and accepted her meaning as valid. The quoted text is one of the most oft quoted parts of the essay. Lots of folks have disagreed with her, but not with her skills at writing. (Granted that that <b>has</b> been a common topic of discussion though, because most critiques find it necessary to first categorize her style in order to make sure people do understand it. It was not an academic analysis, for example.)

<p>Yes, yes Fred, well said, yet my main point is that those associations, careful contextual 'unfree associations' digesting a concept piece v. contexts supplied by freely associating our own experience to a photograph: in both situations our understandings may degrade into assumptions that cause us to not actually look at the girls in the photo, or to catch an error in a text. We fill in meanings instead of looking and it is difficult to be aware that our mind has erroneously filled in.</p>

<p>Another example of that mechanism of mind: how hard it is to catch an error when proof reading. Our mind supplies the correct word and we can't see the error until pointed out to us by another who takes a fresh look without already knowing the meanings, a fresh look able to actually look at the words on the page. (I could have sworn I typed Floyd, but again I typed the wrong name even though consciously trying not to err.)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Floyd - "It is clear that Sontag did not mean to literally commit the crime of murder; she meant to destroy the context of a person in the sense of the second definition, which you totally ignored, given by Merriam-Webster."</p>

<p>Yes it is clear that Sontag did not mean a literal murder, that has always been clear to me. </p>

<p>Floyd - "...she meant to destroy the context of a person in the sense of the second definition...."</p>

<p>I'm sure she did mean that or something very close to that.</p>

<p>As a verb, murder means an action of some kind. To destroy, mangle, kill, figuratively or literally. Sontag uses the term 'subliminal murder', where an actor 'murders' without awareness of that act, unconsciously, unknowingly destroying the context of a person.</p>

<p>"Just as a camera is sublimation of a gun..."</p>

<p>Sublimation is knowing, deliberate, intentional, on purpose, fully aware as set in stone by S. Freud and Sontag is obviously misusing 'sublimation' when we, as she intended, understand her use of 'sublimation' in the Freudian sense. In effect, she wrote that just as a camera is an <em>intentional</em> substitute for a gun, so a photograph is <em>unintentional</em> destruction.... She got that wrong. Intention isn't unintended, and unintended isn't intentional.</p>

<p>And Floyd, the element of intent is by Freud's definition, not mine and not Sontag's. Sontag didn't understand the word 'sublimation' precisely at the point where she used the word 'sublimation' in that sentence. She may have used the word sublimation correctly many times in her writings. Here she did not. She made a mistake, and it is not a waste of my time to point that out. Sontag is obviously intending Freud's usage, just as would have a Marcuse, also writing at that time. But Sontag used it incorrectly in that instance.</p>

<p>And we fill in her intended meaning anyway, even to the point of missing her mistake, or of refusing to see the mistake when it's pointed out correctly as I have correctly pointed out hers. Isn't that how our feeble minds work? We don't look, we don't see, we aren't cognizant, we operate by presets and assumptions, gloss over, etc. Or is it just me?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Floyd - "You have made it clear that as an editor you are a failure."</p>

<p>How about this then:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Because a camera unconsciously substitutes for a gun, to photograph someone is subliminal murder "- a soft murder" [befitting] "a sad, frightened time."</p>

</blockquote>

<p> </p>

<p>Fred - "We feel the power of the camera as we would a gun but we don't have a clue about the "murders" we can potentially commit with them."</p>

<p>It sounds like Sontag would have been in the camp of those who would have us increase our awareness of the reality of others, that is, for relatedness as opposed to objectification/decontextualizations.</p>

<p>Fred - "It is a subliminal murder, however, because we haven't got a clue of what the power can result in."</p>

<p>That's where Richard Avedon comes to mind, with the conversation he had with his psychoanalyst concerning photographing his ailing father, quoted in a recent thread as you may recall. The two spoke to Avedon having a hidden, hostile motive in that photographic act, a symbolic killing of his father. To me, that approach, of uncovering hidden motives is useful work although I prefer to think of it less formulaically as 'shadow work' in the Jungian sense. The difference seems to me that with Freud it's a search for somewhat formulaic hitherto unknown ugly stuff, which however true just leads to a deflated feeling. While for Jung, shadow work looks like a path that leads to a sort of self-reunification. I think it is the almost sycophantic laurens van der post who has Jung saying of himself that his own pilgrim's progress was something like a thousand mile fall into the pitiable lump of dust that he was. Given the size of Jung's ego and his successes, that probably was quite a long fall, but transformative for him in that he could accept his own mere humanity. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>And as to symbol, say Avedon ritually 'murdering' his father whether or not bringing into that an idea of an Oedipus complex, and just for lack of a better example: symbol conveys both a generalized and a local meaning. When those meanings combine we have good art, generally true so much as to be insignificant, almost trite, yet so localized and personal in meaning as to be somehow transformative. It's one thing to speak of a sort of shared complex intellectually, it's another thing for someone in Avedon's family circumstances, say, to confront in himself the effect of having had a father who could never communicate his love except by talking about money. Intellectually there is much to say, but when in confrontation with the pain of that effect, we can say nothing at some point and perhaps at that point truly listen to symbol and let go. But which symbol? I don't know. Yet on the one hand we talk of things in impersonalized symbolic language. On the other, we are struck at our core by symbol when symbol is experienced very locally with intensely personal meaning we probably can't adequately convey with words. But symbol can carry and convey, where we can't. A woman rape victim I knew couldn't sleep for weeks after the brutal event, and was in hospital. She finally slept and dreamed that in her room at home, a hitherto unknown door had become apparent. When she awoke from the dream she felt she could go on with her life. She was able to go home. The dream told her that there was a way. She had the feeling from the dream that things were OK. It is so general an image, a door, a passage, as to be trite, but it was a healing image in a dream that needed no words really, no technical discussion, with a localized meaning specific to her and her circumstances.</p>

<p>Charles, if I understand your main point through this thread, it is your claim that Winogrand and Sontag are talking about a difference that is not a difference as you understand it. That is, there is no difference between the thing photographed and the thing. </p>

<p>The way I would look at it is that there is a big difference, even though we look at both, the thing and the thing photographed, through perspectives and within contexts.</p>

<p>Why we get into words and meanings of texts is not as clear to me, other than to show that these, too, are always going to be perspectivized and contextualized.</p>

<p>But this is simply a function of being human.</p>

<p>EVERYTHING is contextualized and known from a perspective. </p>

<p>That doesn't mean everything is the same. It just means things are the same <em>in that respect</em>.</p>

<p>What Winogrand and Sontag are asking is that we notice differences between photos and the things they present to us. If we don't see a difference there, just as if we don't see a difference between dreams and waking states, we can be in both epistemological and ontological trouble.</p>

<p>The differences are of category, dimensionality, immediacy and, as I see it most importantly from the photographic standpoint, artifice.</p>

<p><em>"in both situations our understandings may degrade into assumptions that cause us to not actually look at the girls in the photo, or to catch an error in a text. We fill in meanings instead of looking and it is difficult to be aware that our mind has erroneously filled in."</em></p>

<p>The problem is this: When you glean a better understanding of Sontag's ideas from filling in meanings given in her original text, you are not ERRONEOUSLY filling something in. You are more CORRECTLY understanding her ideas. It depends on your goal. Are you wanting to dissect the <em>specific meanings of words</em> as used? (For me, this is more an exercise in grammar. Like Floyd, I spent most of my years as a typesetter and am good at catching typos and grammatical mistakes, including the sometimes confusing usage of words.) Or are you wanting to understand the <em>ideas</em> a thinker is presenting, in which case the whole of an essay is a better source than out-of-context quotes?</p>

<p>When, on the other hand, you look at girls in a photo ONLY as if they were girls you know, you move FURTHER from, not closer to, a critical reading of the photo. That's not to say personalizing what you see in a photo doesn't have its place and isn't something grand a photo moves us to do. But if that's all that's done, it might be to miss new and bigger ideas and pictures, similar to what happens when one puts emphasis only on and dissects a few sentences out of context rather than reading an entire essay.</p>

<p>Psychologically I don't see much difference between possessing an image of a person in the form of a photograph and possessing an image of a person ephemerally, only in my mind. There is a difference between the image of a thing and the thing regardless of photograph or only in mind; but psychologically I don't see much difference between holding a photographic image of a woman in one hand, or closing my eyes and having a woman as an image only in my mind in the other hand. The form the image takes, concrete or ephemeral, isn't that important. Sculpture produces an art object just as a photograph is an art object. A sculpture is a representation like a photograph is a representation, and there too is a difference between a representation of a thing and the thing represented. A sculpture is a 3d materialization of an image, a photograph 2d.</p>

<p>So consider Winogrand, both rewritten:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>That's a sculpture-- They're mute, they don't have any narrative ability at all, you know what something looked like, but you don't know what's happening ... There isn't a sculpture in the world that has any narrative ability, any of them.</p>

<p><strong><em>Sculptures do not tell stories</em></strong>, they show you what something looks like, through a sculptor's chisel. The minute you relate this thing [indicating the sculpture being examined] to what was sculpted, it's a lie. It's three dimensional, and yet it's still the illusion of a literal description ...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>If there were a distinction with a difference, how could my rewrite make any sense?</p>

<p>Fred - "The problem is this: When you glean a better understanding of Sontag's ideas from filling in meanings given in her original text, you are not ERRONEOUSLY filling something in."</p>

<p>Right. And when I glean a better understanding of a couple of sentences, how they are constructed and how words are used by the author, I'm not erroneously filling something in, I'm filling something in from objective contexts like a dictionary. Look, I hate to keep harping on that point, but if someone, including me, wants to use Freudian or Jungian language they (I) can certainly be understood as intentionally using another's idea, using it, amplifying it, coloring it or whatever, but in their (my) usage we should be able to compare that usage of a term with the usage of the person who coined the term, in this case Freud. Sontag brought Freud's conceptual framework into a discussion of photography and anyone is free to comment on how well she did that and if she made any errors. But a defense of her usage does not consist of saying "she really meant this" or "she really meant that" or claiming that I the critic don't understand the term and then not showing me in Freud's concept of sublimation how I somehow missed that Freud thought sublimation was a subliminal, not a conscious, process.</p>

<p>Grammar is found in grammar books, how to use words in sentences correctly, but meanings of words are not grammar and my simple point on Sontag's use of sublimation/subliminal has to do with the meanings of a couple words, not her grammatical usage.</p>

<p>And I'm using Sontag's mistake as a thing, like a photograph, that we don't look at, don't see, or gloss over her mistake of using the words sublimation/subliminal incorrectly when she fully intended Freud's term 'sublimation'. And I'm noticing that no one wants to look at the simple mistake she made. Don't look, don't see, can't acknowledge the thing. Which is human, not just an operation of our minds particular to viewing photographs, but an operation of our minds that in some important sense is a fundamental way in which our minds work. It is in that unconscious space, in the process by which an obvious known get's replaced by a representation, that we may find the origin of art, symbol and a whole lot more. Because it happens when we aren't looking, are diverted, aren't in control and instead in control is the autonomy of our mind. That's the rent in the fabric of our universe that offers a bit of hope that things won't always be as they are. Because in that rent we can have a conversation with symbol as it presents, can talk to it and it to us and in that process of becoming more aware we can begi to change and be each more loving with each and the other. But its awfully hard to look there.</p>

<p> </p>

<p><em>"but psychologically I don't see much difference between holding a photographic image of a woman in one hand, or closing my eyes and having a woman as an image only in my mind in the other hand"</em></p>

<p>I don't know what you mean by including the qualifier "psychologically" at the beginning of this sentence. </p>

<p>This is a different question than the one I've been addressing which may account for some of the confusion I've had throughout this thread. I thought we were discussing the difference between a photo of something and the thing photographed, not the difference between a mental image and a photo. </p>

<p>But I'll address the latter question now. To me, there is quite a difference. The photo image is tangible. I can touch it, or it is at least touchable even if a museum won't let me do so. I cannot touch a mental image, which is intangible. The mental image is far more ephemeral to me than the photo image.</p>

<p>Yes, I can objectify women--very important--or homeless people, or hot, young guys with six packs. And I can do that in my mind (without a photo) as well as with a photo.</p>

<p>As I said above, though, the photo has at least two qualities that make the objectification much more a factor and more complete, for me. It can and often is s<em>hared</em>. And it <em>preserves</em> the image of the objectification, it sets it, as it were, in stone. A mental image is individual. Even though it can be talked about in public, it can't be shown in public because then it would no longer be a mental image. And a photo stills and preserves. A mental image ebbs and flows. </p>

<p>The way I read Sontag was as a reminder how holding a camera can be used as an excuse to objectify, to pretend to do one thing (or even misguidedly think one is doing one thing) and have the result be very much another. Cameras are often used to hide behind. I'd be surprised if there were anyone who's used one who hasn't done that at some time or another. Even "I am documenting the plight of homeless people with the best of intentions" can become "I have exploited homeless people and traded on the pathos of their images."</p>

<p>This is not to say there aren't plenty of other ways to objectify homeless people or anyone else. There are. But, in a society increasingly clicking away at everything in sight, it's not a bad idea for us all to reflect on what we're doing and what the ramifications of that are for others and for culture in general. If looking itself or creating mental images were the same thing as the act of photographing, why would we bother to carry around a camera and make photographs?</p>

<p>For me, the tangible product is part of the answer and the external mechanism between me and the other is another part. The camera is an external mechanism. Our eyes, and our minds, are not.</p>