The "meaning" of a photograph

[paulr]

"I would say that the differences among media have a large impact on what sorts of interpretation - if any - make sense;"

In general I agree. although in my experience the differences between individual works seems to have a more significant impact on this than the difference between media.

"the fact that subjectivity does not automatically imply relativism, by itself, places no meaningful constraint and provides no meaningful guidance with respect to what is possible or reasonable."

You're right, not by itself it doesn't. But what it does do is protect you from a lot of the postmodern critics (the ones you hold in such low regard) who consider art to be nothing more than their raw material, and reality nothing more than an infinitely mouldable plaything. Fish's argument gives you a stepping off point for saying, "not so fast! Just because meaning isn't absolute doesn't mean it's whatever you say it is." And his theory (and others like it) do provide some framework for examining interpretations and lines of inquiry. I didn't get into all that because it's beyond the scope of a photo message board. But I'll say that I've found his ideas, in the broadest sense, to be very helpful when approaching many different art forms.

And Paul, you don't need to convince me of the differences between media. As a writer and musician and photographer, I know pretty well that I can't say in one medium what I can say in another. If you look higher in the thead, you'll see I already cited that Robert Frost quote.

[Paul Butzi]

And Paul, you don't need to convince me of the differences between media. As a writer and musician and photographer, I know pretty well that I can't say in one medium what I can say in another. If you look higher in the thead, you'll see I already cited that Robert Frost quote.

Ok, fair enough. I guess I'm at a loss as to why you would say that expression in one medium is not isomorphic to expression in a different medium, and then assert that symbols act in the same way regardless of whether they're conveyed by words or by images.

You wrote "symbols act in a similar way whether conveyed through images or through words. And their foundation in cultural language is equally strong. Are there also fundamental differences? Of course. But I can't think of significant differences for the purposes of this discussion. I'm curius to hear any you can think of. "

Ok, here's a significant difference.

consider the following symbol - a naked, young girl, running down a dirt road. Her face is contorted in a rictus of terror. Behind her are clouds of smoke, and soldiers with guns. Her home has just been destroyed by napalm bombing, and her brother killed.

now, look at Nick Ut's photograph at www.users.sbg.ac.at/~jack/misc/war/kimphuc.jpg

I'm sorry. These two communications of the symbol do not have the same impact, they do not act on me in the same way. The two experiences of the communication of the symbol are, in fact, fundamentally different, at least for me. That must be true for others, as well, since this photograph had a huge impact on people's perceptions of the Vietnam War, whereas various written descriptions of similar events had a much smaller impact.

So when you say that symbols act in the same way whether conveyed with images or with words, I'm left either disagreeing, or else misunderstanding what you're saying on some fundamental level.

[paulr]

Paul, keep in mind that you are comparing one particular photographic description (a very powerful one) to one particular verbal description (a fairly prosaic one). The fact that one of these descriptions moves you more than the other is not remarkable. I could likewise say that I've never seen a picture of a wheelbarrow that moved me as deeply as the Williams poem. But this also wouldn't demonstrate much.

My point about the language of symbols (and again, this is a very small part of the real idea i was trying to get across) is that all else being equal, their meaning is similar regardless of the form of description. This may have something to do with them mapping to the same meta-language that you mentioned .. who knows. Of course, all else is never equal. And similar meaning is not the same thig as identical impact. I chose symbol as an example of metaphor because it 1) exists with obvious parallels in both language and image, 2) is easily talked about, and 3) has strong cultural context. That's really all that was about.

This whole part of the discussion is just a tangent brought up when Oren doubted that the essay I refered to could apply in any way to images. I think it does ... but if you want to judge for yourself, I'd suggest reading the essay.

[Oren Grad]

PaulR, do you know of any source for the Fish essay other than his volume of collected writings under the same title?

[paulr]

I didn't see it online. I have it in a volume called Criticissm The Major Statements, edited by Charles Kaplan. I'm guessing you could find it used for pennies .. it's the kind ot thing most students get rid of the minute they can.

I don't know too much about Fish. He seems to have a reputation as one of the anything-goes deconstructionists. The "Is there a text in this class" essay is a rebuttal, demonstrating that you can take subjective reader response into account without dismissing the idea of intrinsic meaning in a text. It was originally given as a talk, so it's not too dense or academic.