Photography Meaning

[Damon Lynch]

All photography is documentary to the extent that it necessarily has an indexical relationship to the world which it depicts.

I guess you are assuming a dyadic sign. I'm curious who taught you the theory all photography is documentary, and how you justify it using the idea of the indexicality of photographs. Can you be specific who taught you or how precisely you came to this theory?

[elliot_n]

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida.

[Damon Lynch]

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida.

Given your stance that all photography is documentary, it seems you don't agree with Martin Herbert who said "I don't go looking for 'ideas about photography' in that book; I read it for a certain kind of vulnerability."

Having just looked at the book now, my initial impression is that it is diametrically opposed to the system of signs propounded by Charles Sanders Peirce.

[elliot_n]

Given your stance that all photography is documentary, it seems you don't agree with Martin Herbert who said "I don't go looking for 'ideas about photography' in that book; I read it for a certain kind of vulnerability."

No, I don't agree with him. As an intimate meditation on death, Camera Lucida is indeed charged with a touching vulnerability. However, in the space that is opened up by that vulnerability, Barthes offers many profound insights into photography (e.g. his ideas about the photograph's 'studium' and 'punctum').

Having just looked at the book now, my initial impression is that it is diametrically opposed to the system of signs propounded by Charles Sanders Peirce.

In Camera Lucida, Barthes is not proposing that photography is a system of signs. (He did that in his earlier work.) Instead, through a meditation on the passing of his mother, Barthes focuses on photography's indexicality – its umbilical connection with its referent (which I am here calling its documentary character). The photograph, for Barthes, is always haunted by what once was, and is no more. (Language, poetic or otherwise, does not have that quality.) 

[amolitor]

I have read Barthes only in translation, perhaps he fares better in  French.

Still. Camera Lucida reads like a wildly self-indulgent mess, which boils down to  "I,  Roland Barthes, am terribly sensitive,
and see profound things in  what you might consider a trivial snapshot"

studium and puntum are the string theory of photography, they are ideas that lead nowhere. I have literally never seen them mentioned except as a form
of name-dropping (which occurs constantly) and anyways not only is Barthes the only person ever who seems to actually perceive photographs this way
(but then, see above, it strikes the cynical reader that even this is probably a sham) but the things he calls out as examples of "punctum", asserting that they
are trivial details the photographer would not himself have noticed, are exactly the kids of things a photographer *does* notice. The woman's shoes.

His notion of "blind field" is considerably more useful, but I think he lifted it from his cinema friends.

The rest is pretty much warmed over Sontag. As these things tend to be. While she was certainly a self-indulgent snob, she wrote down a lot of the basics tolerably well.

[Tim Lookingbill]

As usual I had to look up the meaning of "indexicality" (guess I love word torture) and google gives me a word that I had to look up as well...deictic?!

...relating to or denoting a word or expression whose meaning is dependent on the context in which it is used, e.g., here, you, me, that one there, or next Tuesday

WTF!
If a picture is worth a thousand words I hope those two aren't included.

[Damon Lynch]

Barthes focuses on photography's indexicality – its umbilical connection with its referent (which I am here calling its documentary character).

Which posits a dyad of photo and referent as the analytical unit, in contrast to C S Peirce's triadic sign. Peirce's pragmatic approach means the photo's context is critical, as is the photographer's intent. When the primary unit is a dyad, with no interpretant necessary, then it's easy to see how both context and intent can be ignored by the analyst. With Peirce's tradic system, in which an interpretant is a fundamental dimension, a photo of intimate body parts in a porn magazine is clearly different from a photo of the same body parts submitted by a police photographer as courtroom evidence. Using dyadic approach, one could argue these photos are fundamentally the 'same', as they record the same thing, intimate body parts.

[amolitor]

Tim, the link you probably want is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_claim_(photography)

"Indexical" is a word with a pretty specific meaning in photography, which is related to some other meanings and I think unrelated to the most common meanings (don't quote me on the last, I  only ever use it about photographs, and look up the rest as-needed, which is not very often).

[Damon Lynch]

As usual I had to look up the meaning of "indexicality" (guess I love word torture) and google gives me a word that I had to look up as well...deictic?!

When you were learning how to speak, as an infant, you learned about deictic time (which is indexical) very early in life -- words such as "now" or "tomorrow". So no worries, you already know a lot about both terms, because we're born with the capacity to think with them! 

[Tim Lookingbill]

Tim, the link you probably want is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_claim_(photography)

"Indexical" is a word with a pretty specific meaning in photography, which is related to some other meanings and I think unrelated to the most common meanings (don't quote me on the last, I  only ever use it about photographs, and look up the rest as-needed, which is not very often).

I don't understand that wiki link. It requires I log in and wiki indicates it doesn't have an article with this exact name "Truth Claim" (Photography).

Is that intentional as some kind of inside joke? I don't know what to do with that page you linked to.

If it's this difficult to find the meaning to a word it's not that important to me. I don't work with words. I work with images. The images put words in my head. Not the other way around.

In fact I used to be an avid reader as a teen and then I had to get a job and raise a family and now can't remember one thing about all those books I read. But I do remember the movies made from some of these books especially Agatha Christie novels and To Kill A Mockingbird.

[amolitor]

The link is just busted, sorry. I don't know how to get the parentheses reliably past the forum software?

If you're interested, though, on Wikipedia you can search for "Truth Claim" and it will, or it should, give you a choice of two
in the search box dropdown, one of which is "Truth Claim (photography)" or similar. That's the one you want.

It's pretty short and straightforward, and gives you a thumbnail sketch of what (some of what, I think) elliot_n is talking about.

[Tim Lookingbill]

When you were learning how to speak, as an infant, you learned about deictic time (which is indexical) very early in life -- words such as "now" or "tomorrow". So no worries, you already know a lot about both terms, because we're born with the capacity to think with them! 

I can tell you the words that come to my head when I view an image are far more profound than "tomorrow" or "now". Again this discussion has turned into word torture, nothing more.

I dream in color pictures and I can use words to describe these vivid dreams after I wake up. Thousands of words that have a nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. The two words mentioned "indexicality" and "deictic" are dead and meaningless to me and not even close to dream like.

I am so glad I don't read books on photography whether by a photographer or critic.

[Tim Lookingbill]

The link is just busted, sorry. I don't know how to get the parentheses reliably past the forum software?

If you're interested, though, on Wikipedia you can search for "Truth Claim" and it will, or it should, give you a choice of two
in the search box dropdown, one of which is "Truth Claim (photography)" or similar. That's the one you want.

It's pretty short and straightforward, and gives you a thumbnail sketch of what (some of what, I think) elliot_n is talking about.

That's OK. It's not for me. Not interested anyway. But thanks for making the effort.

[amolitor]

Perfectly reasonable,  Tim.

There's a pretty sunstantial body of thought on what Photgraphic Meaning might be. How do photographs "work", how do people
looking at them associate meaning to them, what makes a photograph not a painting? How can photographs influence people
and societies, blah blah blah.

I happen to find the whole tedious affair endlessly interesting, but it's NOT photography. It's the map, not the territory.

I love maps too, though. A map of Paris is a lot more interesting to me than Paris itself is, oddly enough.

[Damon Lynch]

I can tell you the words that come to my head when I view an image are far more profound than "tomorrow" or "now".

That's undoubtedly true. But it's also true that the thoughts you do have when thinking about photography, and the words you put to those thoughts, are indexical and deictic, because that's how our minds work. You can ignore them intellectually and be none the poorer for it, but you can't escape them in practice

[Tim Lookingbill]

Perfectly reasonable,  Tim.

There's a pretty sunstantial body of thought on what Photgraphic Meaning might be. How do photographs "work", how do people
looking at them associate meaning to them, what makes a photograph not a painting? How can photographs influence people
and societies, blah blah blah.

I happen to find the whole tedious affair endlessly interesting, but it's NOT photography. It's the map, not the territory.

I love maps too, though. A map of Paris is a lot more interesting to me than Paris itself is, oddly enough.

I'm sure there are many ways folks have formulated a definition about the function and purpose of photography. I can't for the life of me think of an image to shoot and then find that scene or subject to flesh it out. My mind just doesn't work that way. I do get excited and use this as motivation when I attempt to use the camera to redefine what I see about the world through composition, texture, ambience, nuance, etc.

But words don't enter my mind in describing what I see. After I process and finish the image and not look at it for months and return, that's when the words enter my mind but they're more emotional than logically specific in nature. There's no cold read description involved.

[Tim Lookingbill]

That's undoubtedly true. But it's also true that the thoughts you do have when thinking about photography, and the words you put to those thoughts, are indexical and deictic, because that's how our minds work. You can ignore them intellectually and be none the poorer for it, but you can't escape them in practice

Sorry, Damon. I still don't understand the meaning of those words or how to use them in a sentence to make sense of them.

[Damon Lynch]

Sorry, Damon. I still don't understand the meaning of those words or how to use them in a sentence to make sense of them.

And that's perfectly fine! You can use a computer without knowing what a null pointer is, because you don't need to know how to program it. You can master a computer without knowing any of that stuff.

Likewise I agree with you that we can appreciate photography very deeply without having to read books about the theory of photography, or theories about language. It's a different type of knowledge.

While Barthes' ideas on photography are of no interest to me personally, I did very much enjoy the novel Austerlitz. The author, W G Sebald, does apparently appreciate Barthes.

[Rob C]

Meaning of something - life, probably.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Meaning of something - life, probably.

Makes a lot more sense than either lexicality or deicticity.