"Against Interpretation" S. S.

[aplumpton]

<p><em>"I think photographic content can <strong>suggest</strong> a narrative without being itself narrative."</em></p>

<p>= The material evoking, or conveying, the immaterial.</p>

<p><em>"I like faces that are imbued with <strong>or that I can imbue with</strong> content and expression. I generally find photos that do that more intriguing/interesting/compelling than ones that don't."</em></p>

<p>= Interpretation.</p>

<p>I think these two examples indicate quite positively that one cannot be "against interpretation", unless of course one wishes to create some sort of movement claiming that. </p>

[ernest-b]

<p>Julie wrote:<strong> </strong><em> </em></p>

<p><em>"Decorative? I'm chewing on that word. It's as if you're divvying the picture up, discarding bits and pieces. Can you do that? Can you take the fish and throw away the water it came in?"</em></p>

<p>Arthur wrote:<em> </em></p>

<p><em>"'I like faces that are imbued with <strong>or that I can imbue with</strong> content and expression. I generally find photos that do that more intriguing/interesting/compelling than ones that don't.'</em><br /> <em>= Interpretation."</em></p>

<p>Fred, as a follow-on to Julie's question and Arthur's equation (though from a very slightly different angle): how can you distinguish between "decorative" elements and "content" elements of an image, <em>without</em> engaging in interpretation?</p>

<p>Isn't "interpretation" the very process, by which you are assigning to some elements ("content") a relatively greater importance/significance/meaning, while discounting the importance/significance/meaning of other ("decorative") elements?</p>

<p> </p>

[jtk]

<p>I don't think Fred's interpreting at all. </p>

<p>Interpretation is a verbal activitiy, a matter of words. That's why Sontag's so relevant and notions of photo-interpretation are so peripheral to apprehension and response to many non-trite (ie non symbolic) images.</p>

<p> </p>

[jtk]

<p>"Can you take the fish and throw away the water it came in?" - Julie</p>

<p>Yes, of course you can. People who "interpret" (a verbal activity) before they respond (eg nonverbal association, emotion etc) do exactly that. And in any case, we do respond individually unless we're biased by "authoritative" interpretations. It's not "artists" that interpret, it's the hangers-on.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p><em>"Interpretation is a verbal activity"</em></p>

<p>No. Interpretation is a mental activity, of which verbal words are just one way that humans process and express those thoughts.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Many photographers have recognised the importance of Sontag's critique, which is as much a critique of society as photography. The book at least makes one think seriously about the two, whether or not one accepts her varied and sometimes self-contradictory arguments. Perhaps we should reflect on some of the critiques of the critique, of which a few here of the time have been published:</p>

<p>From Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Against Photography," New York Times, November 17, 1977.</p>

<p>"To the extent that an art fails, the civilization that produced it fails. So for her [sontag] the failure of photography as an art form amounts not just to the failure of a technical experiment; it reflects what is wrong with industrial society."</p>

<p>"Argue with Sontag if you will. But know that she has made a powerful and complex case against photography" (p. 37).</p>

<p>From <a href="http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Alfred+Kazin">Alfred Kazin</a>, "Sontag is Not a Camera," Esquire, February 1978.</p>

<p>"[susan] Sontag is s much a theorist and what Europeans call a cafe intellectual - lots of opinions about everything - that her book adds up to a series of epigrams about the widest possible significance of photography in our photo-crowded world" (p. 50).</p>

<p>"Sontag is a prisoner of literary chic. Social reality seems to her a symbol in the mind of some gifted artist, writer, photographer. On Photography comes out of literature, not the naked world that is still there for you and me to look at as we damn please" (p. 51).</p>

<p>From Michael Starenko, "On On Photography," New Art Examiner, Vol. 5, no. 7 (April 1978):</p>

<p>"To put it much too crudely, the unrelenting polemic; the great number of apparently contradictory intellectual shifts; the obvious departures from common sense logic - the form - this then is the 'message' of On Photography. Any photography critic (or any critic, for that matter) could attempt to explain the contradictions of a photography-world which contains such elements as photographed pornography, wedding rituals, Harry Callahan, Les Krims, or Popular Photography. While reading On Photography we experience these contradictions immediately, vividly, and without external mediation" (p. 12).</p>

<p>From Douglas Davis, "Kicking the Image Habit," Newsweek, December 5, 1977:</p>

<p>"'On Photography'" overstates its ease because the book is really about a world polluted, as Sontag sees it, by images, cars, poisoned air, poisoned water - the detritus of an industrialism gone mad, destroying man's old links to nature and himself. 'So many things in modern life conspire to dis-associate us from ourselves,' she says. 'I'm not against images. I just want to open this case out.' That she has done so is the great virtue of this passionate, flawed book. The sins she perceives in photography lie elsewhere, in the entire culture, in the moving image that is film and television, as well as in the still image. But even as she denounces it, she raises photography to a new level of seriousness. After Sontag, photography must be written about not only as a force in the arts, but as one that is increasingly powerful in the nature and destiny of our global society" (p. 100).</p>

[ernest-b]

<p><em>"Interpretation is a verbal activitiy, a matter of words."</em></p>

<p>John, the concept of "interpretation"<strong><em> can</em></strong> be limited to "exclusively verbal" activity, <strong><em>if</em></strong> one accepts that Susan Sontag's formulations <em> </em>in "Against Interpretation" comprise the sole acceptable definition of the word:</p>

<p>--------------</p>

<p>Sontag wrote:</p>

<p><em>"Of course, I don’t mean interpretation in the broadest sense, the sense in which Nietzsche (rightly) says, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” By interpretation, I mean here a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain “rules” of interpretation.</em></p>

<p><em>"Directed to art, interpretation means plucking a set of elements (the X, the Y, the Z, and so forth) from the whole work. The task of interpretation is virtually one of translation. The interpreter says, Look, don’t you see that X is really - or, really means - A? That Y is really B? That Z is really C?</em></p>

<p><em>"What situation could prompt this curious project for transforming a text? History gives us the materials for an answer...</em></p>

<p><em>"...interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities. Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness. In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling...<strong> </strong></em></p>

<p><em>"Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling...</em></p>

<p><em>"In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.</em></p>

<p><em>"This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else."</em></p>

<p>-----------</p>

<p><strong><em>However</em></strong>, the concept of artistic/visual/musical/psychological "interpretation" existed long before Sontag wrote her manifesto--and many thoughtful people used the word, with broader, different connotations or nuances, before she came along. Different, broader concepts of the word continue to be employed by those not adopting Sontag's diagnosis and prescription--i.e., the majority. Her piece is interesting, and she certainly expressed her views clearly; but do you think there is a consensus that her views in this manifesto constitute a "controlling authority" on the issue?</p>

<p>John, I think your perspective on this was defensible from the outset--if you simply had attached reasonable caveats: <em> e.g.</em>, "If one accepts Susan Sontag's perspective on the concept of "interpretation", as I do, then the act of "interpretation" can be defined as [xxx] and limited to [yyy]. Therefore, in my opinion, [zzz]."</p>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"Can you take the fish and throw away the water it came in?"</em></p>

<p>Julie, yes. Of course, I can't divide up the photo physically into content and decoration and there is plenty of overlap. But I can certainly talk about them each differently. Just as I can't really "separate" content from form but I can talk about the different role each plays and ways each operates.<br /> _________________________________________<br /> Anders, understanding the context of a painting (who painted it, what his motivations were relative to other points in history and relative to his own peers, etc.) is different from interpreting a painting. Two very different uses of "meaning" for me. I can learn that the Impressionists were motivated by one way of seeing and the Expressionists were approaching painting from a different perspective. That doesn't mean I look at Van Gogh and am moved to decide what the bed means or what half a doorway on the right half of the frame symbolizes. <br /> ______________________________________________<br /> Ernest and Arthur, I can recognize that certain elements are decorative and certain have a more content-oriented role without interpreting either. The interpretation would come later. I suppose we could reduce all these human brain activities to some sort of interpretation and then say we can't live without interpreting. We would then have trivialized interpretation. We'd have an end to the discussion and all potential exploration we might do.</p>

[ernest-b]

<p><em>"Ernest and Arthur, I can recognize that certain elements are decorative and certain have a more content-oriented role without interpreting either. The interpretation would come later. I suppose we could reduce all these human brain activities to some sort of interpretation and then say we can't live without interpreting. We would then have trivialized interpretation. We'd have an end to the discussion and all potential exploration we might do."</em></p>

<p>Well, Fred...like so much of everything that gets sliced and diced (or pounded into shreds of unrecognizable tissue) in this forum, the crux of our disagreement here lies in our differing definitions.</p>

<p>Personally, I think that to <em>"reduce all these human brain activities to some sort of interpretation and then say we can't live without interpreting"</em> is the more intellectually-honest, meaningful approach. You write that <em>"We would then have trivialized interpretation."</em> I would put it differently: that you<em> "would then have moved beyond a limited, minority-view of interpretation."</em></p>

<p>I understand (I think) the kind of distinctions you're trying to make, between significant elements and less-significant elements in an image.</p>

<p>What I do not understand, is how your effort to make such distinctions, and to call them "content-not-interpretation", fits coherently into the context of Sontag's manifesto.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Ernest, I'm not trying to fit anything into Sontag's "manifesto." I'm thinking for myself . . . out loud. Sontag inspired me to think about these things, not from her point of view or within her usages or projects, but from my own.</p>

<p>More and more, when I photograph people, I do so by including context, surroundings, more information, more to see . . . sometimes quite staged contexts at that. I am conscious of engaging in telling a story or making one up as I go along. But it's not a specifically narrative one. And I don't interpret elements of the story to mean things. I confront, I apprehend, I advance the stories. I read Dickens, understand him, go places with him, engage his characters, laugh, cry, wonder. Others interpret Dickens. He wrote stories. Did he have to interpret the words he was using (know what they mean, at least generally speaking) in order to write coherently? Yes. That's the trivial part. We all do it. It doesn't take a great writer to do so. But, while he was writing or afterward, he did not have to sit back and wonder what the story "meant"? It's different to wonder what the words mean and to wonder what the story means. In my photographs, I use content. I engage it. I create it. Interpretation is an afterthought.</p>

<p>For me, this is not about definitions at all. It's about different ways to make photographs and different ways to view them.</p>

[jtk]

<p>My general observation is that sometimes people are averse to descriptive response. I don't think they're incapable of responses other than verbal "reflex," but I think they allow that habit to rule their perceptions. </p>

[ernest-b]

<p><em>"For me, this is not about definitions at all. It's about different ways to make photographs and different ways to view them."</em> -- Fred</p>

<p>Well, Fred, all I can say is, good luck with that.</p>

<p>The ideas you've just formulated and conveyed (in the two paragraphs above) consist of <em>words</em>--each word being a symbol, each word-symbol having a <em>definition</em> that both you and we (your readers) understand. Without this underlying framework of <em>shared definitions of words</em>, a cat might as well have walked across your keyboard; none of us could understand each other.</p>

<p>Yet on the central idea that we're addressing--<em>addressing in words</em>--you write that <em>"for me, this is not about definitions at all."</em></p>

<p>Well, it is a pain in the neck to bother about such things--but otherwise, what's the point?</p>

<p>Once can disregard "definitions", and construct a fine-seeming house of cards. But then, when a slight breeze comes along.....</p>

[ernest-b]

<p><em>"My general observation is that sometimes people are averse to descriptive response. I don't think they're incapable of responses other than verbal 'reflex,' but I think they allow that habit to rule their perceptions."</em></p>

<p>John, I think that's very well stated, and I agree.</p>

[jtk]

<p>There's no reason whatsoever for us to qualify or be tentative about our thinking, especially not at the behest of people who are primarly concerned with preconceptions.</p>

<p>The fact mere link to Sontag re: interpretation, and expression of general agreement caused panic and reversion to bottom-fishing for quotations that were negative about entirely other Sontag writings tells a very specific story. Personal attack and antique polemics vs Sontag by lesser writers, didn't even try to address "Against Interpretation"</p>

<p>The idea that I needed to qualify my expressions with "if you accept that" is fundamentally and intentionally oppressive. </p>

<p>Sontag has been criticized for being inconsistent, for shifting over time. That suggests that she was bolder and more honest intellectually than her critics. Who will read Lehman Haupt in the future?</p>

[ernest-b]

<p><em>"There's no reason whatsoever for us to qualify or be tentative about our thinking..."</em> --John Kelly</p>

<p>Actually there is, and Arthur put it best: "...healthy discussion requires respect, responsiveness and humility."</p>

<p>------------------------------</p>

<p><em>"The idea that I needed to qualify my expressions with "if you accept that" is fundamentally and intentionally oppressive."</em> -- John Kelly</p>

<p><em>"One law for the lion and the ox is oppression."</em> -- William Blake, <em>Proverbs of Hell</em></p>

<p>------------------------------</p>

<p>John, you seem at times to view yourself as an intellectual "lion", and others on this forum as mere oxen--whose ideas can be preyed upon with indifference, through your unilateral assertions and not-so-veiled put-downs.</p>

<p>Speaking for myself and no one else: I don't respond well to verbal passive-aggression, and don't enjoy the frequent insults. ("amusingly Abrahamic", "refrigerator magnets", etc., etc., etc.)</p>

<p>I also would say: For someone who has so easily and so often put on brass knuckles before striking at others' ideas in this forum, you seem to have a veritable glass jaw.</p>

<p>Express yourself any way you choose, John: you're likely to get responses-in-kind.</p>

[AJHingel]

<blockquote>

<p> understanding the context of a painting (who painted it, what his motivations were relative to other points in history and relative to his own peers, etc.) is different from interpreting a painting.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>With all respect, I don't agree. Understanding the context of a painting is interpreting a painting i.e. giving meaning to the painting.<br>

We can use paintings, or photos, for other ends some of which are totally private and therefor of little interest for others where "meaning" can be defined by projection of one self resulting in feeling good or bad when contemplating them are being reminded of an old acquaintances, experiences and events. <br>

I cannot "understand" - meaning: "give meaning to" and thereby interpret - photos of, say, Fred without seeing them in the context of other photos of Fred and photos of other photographers with the same kind of "project" of photography in mind. What I feel looking at them is of less interest. Far from "empty-minds"-way-of-appreciating "art" - I know!</p>

 

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Ernest - "</strong><em>It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling...<strong> </strong></em><br>

<em>"Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling..."</em></p>

<p>Thank you, Ernest. That part of the quote pinpoints that SS was railing against the stranglehold of Modernist critics of the time, clearly not against all interpretation across all time. Her essay was a brave and revolutionary act towards ushering in a new future. It's not that she was inconsistent, or shifting over time. She <em>knew </em>she was addressing a specific time, and for a specific reason. Does that essay have relevance beyond its time? It does, but at this time, not in the same sense it did when she wrote it.<br>

_________________________</p>

<p>I ran into this recently, and thought it might have some relevance re: the problems of the verbal that keep recurring here.</p>

<p>From the Greek Philosopher Gorgias: "...speech can never exactly represent the perciptibles, since it is different from them, and perciptibles are apprehended each by one kind of organ, speech by another. Hence, since the objects of sight can not presented to any other organ but sight, and the different sense organs cannot give their information to one another, similarly speech give any information about perciptibles, therefore if anything exists, and is comprehended, it is incommunicable."</p>

<p>[Yes, I am aware that there are exceptions to his basic assumption]<br>

________________________________<br>

<em><br /></em></p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>To restrict the essay to Sontag's specific purpose or project is academic . . . and valid, for those who want to read it that way.</p>

<p>Another way to understand it is in terms of one's own photographing and viewing. To <em>adapt</em> it rather than adhere to its original intent is to use it rather than simply study it. For me, this is not about Sontag. These ideas are important for me to put to use, not to understand in terms of Sontag or some distanced notion of art criticism.</p>

<p>It's why I read those plaques on the museum walls about Impressionism and Expressionism with interest, but not with deference or acquiescence. They are a helpful study. But they aren't a viewing of paintings. Van Gogh's paintings, thankfully, go way beyond their school, their time, and their purpose for Van Gogh.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Can it be, just as a hypothesis of understanding each other, that Americans especially, with the emergence of "genuine American art" (Greenberg) lost not their soul, God forbid it! but the ability of viewing paintings as anything else than artifacts to be appreciated as personal consumption goods?</p>

<p>Abstract expressionism and pop-art can be seen like that, but can also be interpreted/understood as the ultimate step away from modern painting (like van Gogh, Matisse etc) announcing the death of painting. Photography might have died with it. <br>

This might also explain why contemporary art forms such as "performance art", which almost by definition are interpretative seem to be so difficult to integrate in the general approach to discussions here in this forum. In this context "against interpretation" has little relevance.<br>

As far as I understand a forthcoming MOMA exposition on abstract expressionism treat exactly that type of question.</p>

[jtk]

<p>Ernest,</p>

<p>Would you like to expand on your earlier "refrigerator magnet" theory? ...it seems to me to denigrate the value of "art"...making kitsch and childrens' work the equal of finer things (to support that equation you called me an "elitist" :-) </p>

<p>Why should your belief that "art" is not an exalted concept be safe from rebuttal? Some reserve the word to refer to something powerful, beyond illustration, skill, even beauty...and I don't think that makes them "elitists." </p>

<p>Reliably, the use of "elitist" reflects most on the person who uses the term...it's become amusingly significant. That's why I mentioned Limbaugh's use of the term. It's central to Tea Party rhetoric, as well. </p>

<p>Some here are very fine 21st Century photographers...have you visited their Photo.net galleries? I regularly wangle with several about various ideas (to each his own, and there are no winners): in the end, the work they share here is a significant measure, as is mine...and yours. This is, after all, a Photo Forum, ie it trys verbally to address something visual, just as "philosophy" tries verbally to address something much larger than itself.</p>

<p>That you "do not respond well" is something you can probably address: you've shown virtually no interest in this topic ( "interpretation"). </p>

<p>You may have noticed my <strong>apology to Luis G</strong>, earlier: I'd been abrasive (and worse) in response to what was, many months ago, a nearly total reliance on scholarly quotations without evidence of his own photography. Like some here (including a moderator), I thought evidence of one's own recent photos would be a good requirement for posting here...and my own current evidence seems lite for that purpose (I've since abandoned that "evidence" trial ballon).</p>

<p>This may be relevant: my attitude about Luis changed for three reasons: 1) I read his many posts, observing that he became progressively more directly (as a person, rather than as a scholar) involved in the various discussions 2) He writes freely, concisely, engages interestingly in ideas, always contributes something pungent and unique. 3) He has a great sense of humor :-) </p>

<p> </p>

[ernest-b]

<p>John, I don't think I could be much clearer than I have been.</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Fred - "</strong>To restrict the essay to Sontag's specific purpose or project is academic . . . and valid, for those who want to read it that way."</p>

<p> <em> </em> "<em>Those who want to read it that way"? Meow. </em>Who could Fred possibly be flaming with that innuendo? Yawn. For all the loftiness, that elevator falls to the basement when the clever button is pressed.</p>

<p><em> </em> This forum, as the insightful and earnest Ernest pointed out, has its own provincial (and infamous) brand of dysfunctionality.</p>

<p><em> </em><br>

*PoP Disclaimer: No mosquitoes were swatted in the making of this post.</p>

<p>___________________________</p>

<p><strong>John - "</strong>This may be relevant: my attitude about Luis changed for three reasons: 1) I read his many posts, observing that he became progressively more directly (as a person, rather than as a scholar) involved in the various discussions 2) He writes freely, concisely, engages interestingly in ideas, always contributes something pungent and unique. 3) He has a great sense of humor"</p>

<p> Geez, <strong>John</strong>, you wanna get a motel room? :-)</p>

<p>__________________________</p>

<p>Fred's seaman / captain came up again (bad choice of words!) in PN's thumbnail three-reel slot-machine picture generator at the bottom. Now I know what he's doing with his left hand! Gorgias was wrong. The verbal can easily affect the visual. Anyone seen the Purell bottle?</p>

<p>____________________________</p>

<p> </p>