Photographs: Truths and Lies

[luis_g]

<p>Thank you, Julie. A little dazzled here. All this before coffee. </p>

[aplumpton]

<p>JH: Fascinating metaphors. Thanks. The food of the imaginations of Borges and Barthes, and Proust (in his oftimes 30 page descriptions of a single phenomenon or event). That photography might increasingly apply that mysterious art, without rejecting the quest of truths.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Fred, agreed that the very skilled photographers can break the barricades of expectation of an audience; the referenced Queen Elizabeth II portrait certainly shows that. Thanks for the clear example (and I happen to like the photo, and it put me on yet another trail....In a way, I think there is an element of surprise in that photo. The unexpected, meaning expectations are not exactly met, without that being a negative remark concerning the quality of the work.<br>

Expectation, surprise, curiosity - a nice chain in the interaction between creator - creation - receiver that can make work stand out. It seems far away from your topic start, but in ways it's also close for me. If the expectation is not met, for me as a viewer, then what is it: am I looking at a truth which is different from my previous understanding, or is it lie? Either way, it provokes me to think, and I tip my hat to the creator.</p>

<p>When I stretch the above a bit, you could even go as far as saying that truth or lie in a photograph are no more than braingames. If one takes a very radical viewpoint in a discussion, how much different is that from searching for a really different angle of view on a subject. Most portraits taken with wide angle lenses from up close are not really attractive, and most people would call the exaggerated perspective a lie. But it's just a different point of view of the same subject. Maybe not as pretty as the classic choices, but no less valid.</p>

<p>Lie versus truth, and the recurring references to negations, also makes me think here a bit too about the Catholic church's view on the devil. Despite popular beliefs, the church does not consider a devil the opposite of God. Evil is not the opposite of good. Evil happens where God isn't, simpler: evil is a lack of good. Is a lie the void of truth, so in a way an empty slot waiting to be filled?<br>

To me, the more I think about it, the more it is all just comes down to an old lesson in physics class: the doppler effect. Your location, relative to the sound (or light for stars), defines how you experience it. There may be one correct interpretation of the phenomenon, but as humans, we're limited in what we can and cannot see and understand. And looking at a photo, it's no different.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>“I wasn't concerned with whether I or anyone else thought the portrait of the Queen was good or whether anyone liked it. It was to illustrate something about cross-cultural understanding of a portrait and about portraits of famous people.”</p>

<p>Nether less, you offered an opinion which subsequently you elaborated on as we go deeper into the thread. So, you can expect that opinion to be challenged…particularly as we are discussing photographic truths.</p>

<p>“She brings me both character and persona and I see the personae of many of her subjects as very much part of their character. I do like to honor the personae of my subjects as part of their realness.”</p>

<p>Stuff and nonsense.</p>

<p>My understanding is the Queen was very disturbed by the authoritarian nature of the Photographer resulting in photographs which portrayed that very image. To hide behind the claim they were about the personae is a weak untruth and at best a betrayal of the understanding of portrait photography. Reality is the photographs portrayed a subject at odds with the photographer resulting in cold harsh photographs where the subject and photographer were extremely uncomfortable with each other.</p>

<p>A truth..not a branding.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><strong>Wouter</strong>, lies as the absence of (void of), rather than the opposite of, truth. That works. A lie, especially a photographic one, could be a truth waiting to happen. In turn, considering the history of supposedly true statements (like "the world is flat"), the truth may just be the future's lie, or at least grand mistake. I talked a bit nebulously above about truth and lie kind of folding into each other as a way to avoid Phylo's concern about dualism and your thoughts seem to clarify that.</p>

<p>"Lie" is often used morally. I don't think photographic lies have to be bad, though some are. If a photojournalist doctors his photos, most consider that unethical. If Nan Goldin resaturates colors or washes them over her shadows, that is unethical mostly to photographic purists. I see Goldin as being <em>true</em> to her vision.</p>

<p>Expectations, yes. Anticipation is part of the process of making a photograph . . . in the planning, the somewhat more spontaneous shooting, and the processing. To varying degrees, I anticipate, for example by pre-visualizing when appropriate and when I can and by remaining close enough to my subject (emotionally) to sense when I will press the shutter. And, as you suggest, viewers have expectations. I can ignore those, fulfill them, disappoint or undermine them, redirect them, explode them.</p>

<p>You ask an interesting question and I'd love to hear others' thoughts on it if they're still engaged:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"</em><em>If the expectation is not met, for me as a viewer, then what is it: am I looking at a truth which is different from my previous understanding, or is it lie? Either way, it provokes me to think, and I tip my hat to the creator."</em> <strong>--Wouter</strong></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I will think more about it but I have a feeling my answer lies (no pun intended) somewhere in the root of your final word . . . <em>create.</em></p>

<p><strong>Luis</strong>, you actually brought this up earlier, with your question "What do we expect to see when we view a photograph?" I'm not sure if that was meant rhetorically (if it was, it was effective) but I wonder if you might actually be thinking of an answer, especially in relation to what Wouter has talked about. </p>

[aplumpton]

<p>On Wouter's question of expectation, I think there lies a trap. What should we expect of the image? What right do we have to have any expectations other than a general desire to see and experience a work that is original and might communicate something. I expect only to be surprised, delighted, disappointed, educated by new approaches or creations, reinforced in my own thoughts and approach, and come away enlightened.</p>

<p>That is certainly the case for fine art and photography in that sense. If you are a client who has mandated an image then, yes, you have a right to expect something more specific or related to truth versus lies. When I go to an exhibition, I do not expect anything specific at the start. If what Wooter means is that he expects not to be lied to, or that he expects something that for him is true, or that he expects something that lies but does so in a specific waùy, then he must accept the limitations of his desire and accept that in all likelihood he may come away unsatisfied.</p>

<p>The only way that makes artistic sense to me is to go to an exhibition and expect nothing except something akin to personal pleasure or intellectual fulfillment, but to interact with the works and interface with what the artist has done, and profit from that, but to have a very open and curious mind about it.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><strong>Arthur</strong>, I interpreted the expectations question a little differently, though I definitely agree with your thoughts coming from the perspective you did. I would answer the question you're answering very similarly, as a matter of fact. Your openness to receive as a viewer seems significant even insofar as the kind of photographer it would make you.</p>

<p>I was thinking more internally to a specific photograph or body of work. As a photographer, I can play with expectations. For example, that is how symbolism works and how moving symbolism forward works. So that, if I am including a cross in a photo, I <em>expect</em> that people will recognize the symbolic nature of the cross, depending on where it is and how I shoot it, of course. Knowing that, I may want to put that cross in a jar of piss as Serrano did, thereby being pretty sure I'd elicit some strong reactions and perhaps stimulate some contentious dialogues about photography, about religion, etc. Or I would more likely come up with something of my own to do with the cross that would either work with or work against the expectations I could predict a viewer might be likely to have.</p>

<p>As a viewer, I have had my expectations played with in some pretty creative ways. For instance, a couple of times, I've received invitations to an artist's show with a painting or photo included on the invitation. When I arrived at the show, it became clear that the example printed on the invitation was a setup of sorts, in one case suggesting one kind of show when in fact the show was nothing like what most of us expected, even though we saw how well the piece on the invitation fit into the very unexpected context of the overall show.</p>

<p>What I described can even happen within one photo. At first glance, sometimes the surface quality (perhaps the color palette, overall style, etc.) of a photo will really belie what I wind up experiencing once I spend a little time looking deeper. That's something I find good photographs doing often, revealing themselves slowly. And sometimes, as they reveal themselves slowly, they manage to set up and then defy expectations. Imagine a photo of a pastoral scene, perhaps with a glowing sunset. At first I'm seeing "pretty." As I look, I realize there are dead body parts strewn on the beach, what I initially thought were rocks and seaweed. Expectations undermined.</p>

[luis_g]

<p><em><strong>[] </strong></em><strong>Wouter's </strong>idea of truth and lie seems like a parallel to light and dark.</p>

<p><strong><em>[]</em> </strong>I have no problem with the word, performance, theory, practice and/ or outcome of art. No more than I do with the word "love", "Human", etc. Everything human contains the seeds of its opposite, or can be seen in a negative light, diminished, soiled, etc. I see art as one of the best things humans do.</p>

<p><em><strong>[] </strong></em>Viewers, considered in a general sense, fall into a bell curve of sorts. A sidewalk art show artist gets a different portion of that curve than, say, an MFA candidate showing at his university, or artists in certain communities at their local venues, or a tagger in a neighborhood full of others like herself. Thanks to fluctuations in the (cultural) vacuum or anthropics, now and then creative people pool, fields form and cluster in unlikely places. Most photographers, quite a few artists (schooled and unschooled) and a large portion of the audience is visually illiterate. This doesn't mean they are blind or insensate. Nor should they be overlooked. They are our last, best hope for the future.</p>

<p>People see what they know. All along that bell curve, different people are expecting different things as they approach a photograph. Many viewers have told me they expect to be entertained, illuminated, exposed to culture, surprised, and have their horizons broadened. Most focus on the "Window" aspect of a photograph, that the frame acts as a window which shows the subject or scene.</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p>Here's an illuminating read on this topic:</p>

<p>http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/pictures-are-supposed-to-be-worth-a-thousand-words/#more-9341</p>

<p> </p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Excellent article, Luis, especially the author's conclusion:</p>

<p>"But photographs are neither true nor false in and of themselves. They are only true or false with respect to statements that we make about them or the questions that we might ask of them."</p>

<p>That is, the importance of the viewer.</p>

<p>I have just been listening this morning over coffee to CBC radio's series "The age of persuasion" (analyses of marketing and advertising), in which the history of the Benneton company advertising was one subject this morning. Visconti, the photographer who initially (1980s?) created the united, international, concept of Beneton, went on to later provide (until he left Benneton in 2005) provoking images in advertising (war scenes, aids victims dying, even the so-called shocking image of a new born baby, umbilical cord attached) that were either accepted, or not, by the media. The images were of actual events, controversial, not typical of advertising. The viewer was incited by these to feelings of displeasure, of peace, of unity, and so on. The company combined public image and moral responsibility in one message.</p>

<p>The photographs became true or false by the interaction of the viewer.</p>

[Julie H]

<p><strong>denotation</strong>: the surface or literal meaning encoded to a signifier, and the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary</p>

<p><strong>connotation</strong>: a meaning of a word or phrase that is suggested or implied, as opposed to a denotation, or literal meaning.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"... each connotation is the starting point of a code(which will never be reconstituted), the articulation of a voice which is woven into the text. [ ... ] connotation releases the double meaning on principle, corrupts the purity of communicatioin: it is a deliberate "static" painstakingly elaborated, introduced into the fictive dialogue between author and reader, in short, a countercommunication [ ... ] Structurally, the existence of two supposedly different systems -- denotation and connotation -- enables the text to operate like a game, each system referring to the other according to the requirements of a certain <em>illusion</em>. [ ... ] denotation is not the first meaning, but pretends to be so, ... it is ultimately no more than the <em>last</em> of the connotations (the one which seems to establish and close the reading) ... This is why, if we want to go along with the classic text, we must keep denotation, the old deity, watchful, cunning, theatrical, foreordained to <em>represent</em> the collective innocence of language."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>-- <em>from</em> S/Z: An Essay <em>by Roland Barthes (for Albert, who liked the previous Barthes so much)</em></p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><strong>Julie</strong>, I guess especially the beginning of this thread played out on the battlefield of the denoters and the connoters, the old guard and the discursive disobedients.</p>

<p>Ain't it the <em>truth</em>.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>This thing between the literalists and those who dare go beyond (even if they respect the literal) is played out routinely on this forum.</p>

<p>_____________________________</p>

<p>"'We can create a land of dreams.'<br /> "'But how can we make it solid?'</p>

<p>"'We don't. That is precisely the error of the mummies. They made spirit solid. When you do this, it ceases to be spirit. We will make ourselves less solid.'<br /> "Well, that's what art is all about, isn't it? All creative thought, actually. A bid for immortality. So long as sloppy, stupid, so-called democracies live, the ghosts of various boringpeople who escape my mind still stalk about in the mess they have made.<br /> "We poets and writers are tidier, fade out in firefly evenings, a Prom and a distant train whistle, we live in a maid opening a boiled egg for a long-ago convalescent, we live in the snow on Michael's grave falling softly like the last descent of their last end on all the living and the dead, we live in the green light at the end of Daisy's dock, in the last and greatest of human dreams..."</p>

<p>--- William Burroughs, <em>"Western Lands"</em></p>

[Julie H]

<p>Fred,</p>

<p>Except ... except for the photograph itself (that piece of paper embedded with silver or pigment). There you encounter the connoter in denoter clothing (or is it denoter in connoter cloths?) and/or some sort of mongrel crossbred schizoid creature that claims that the photograph IS the REAL scene but that's ALL that it is.</p>

<p>Luis,</p>

<p>On the bright side, it gives the excuse to post interesting quotes (thank you). If you had posted the above without attribution I would never have guessed William Burroughs.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Luis, it is parallel to light and dark. When one enters the dark, the eyes will adjust and you will see again - differently with physically different eyes. Maybe to find that the thing you did not see at first is there, or vice-versa. The article you link to is very close to what I tried to say.</p>

<p>The expectation I meant was "per picture based" expectation. You expect a certain result from the artist, a certain view on a subject, a certain use of material, colour, texture, and especially indeed symbols, cultural connotations etc. build up a specific expectation. I think anybody has that, regardless on where on the 'bell-curve' they are. The main difference will be the how graceful can one react when the expectation is not met - I guess that's when the moral judgement on the "lie" start playing a role.</p>

[Art X Photography]

<p>Truths and lies?, what facet of everyday life doesn't carry with it both, all be it in unequal proportions! Why then should photography be any different an expression of the truth we know and the lie with which we express it. I find the struggle between truths and lies to be evident in almost every photograph, why, because the photographer's perception is ever present.<br>

Fred Goldsmith: "Photographs tell deep truths". I agree Fred. They reveal the truth of ever present lies (an oxymoron that works much like a Greek tragedy)<br>

I think in a way I take your words.."So, you get a truth, but not necessarily a truth that took place when the photo was shot" to express that very notion of a filtered reality and an expression of truth which is nothing more than a subjective interpretation of reality and thus may very well be the lie of a realist (food for thought and a good topic of discussion)</p>