At the OCA forums, more than a few students complained about
the academic density of this text. Even
some of the reviews at Amazon complained about the opacity of the
language. I was expecting the worst. But having just finished the first chapter I
can say that the reviewers are right – and wrong.
Clarke notes at the outset that the book is a collection of
essays, so perhaps it wouldn’t be fair to read each as a chapter in a longer
work, even though the arrangement of the essays suggests a book-length
treatment with a loose chronologic order.
It begins with a chapter of definition – what is a photograph? Clarke provides a short history of photography
to show how a photograph at various levels meant different things at different
periods of time. At the physical level,
we went from one-of-a-kind daguerreotypes to mass produced prints from
negatives; at the level of practice, from
professional to amateur; at the level of
meaning, from representing reality to representing something beyond reality. This seems like it might be a fairly standard
treatment of the subject. The language
was accessible, the writing clear.
Within the first paragraph, though, I had written “why?” in
the margin next to this assertion about photographs: “And yet such a common status belies their
underlying complexity and difficulty...”
I imagine that if I were to ask my 18-year old students what a photograph
was, each would be able to give me a reasonably sufficient definition, one that
a person from nearly any culture, if they shared a language, could understand.
Are photographs really so difficult – or are they difficult only to
academics? He notes how out of an infinite
number of photographers and photographs, the canon of the art is represented by
at best 200 names and a limited number of images. Who
has made this so? The last paragraph of
the essay suggests the answer.
Clarke presents the following photo as one which can
highlight the six aspects of a photograph he has just summarized: size, space (or shape), selection (or framing),
depth, color, and time. To me, it
appears to be a photo of a pear, next to a line drawing of a pear on printed text. What is most striking are the contrast in textures:
the smooth pear, the rough wood, the
dinged-up and rusty hinges, and the discolored and creased paper. It’s
an appealing photo. Clarke sees this:
“Thus, the pear is reconstituted, and referred to other
contexts and meanings. The obvious subject
matter is rendered problematic, and the question of definition becomes
basic. In essence, what Parker’s image suggests
is that the photograph, far from being a literal or mirror image of the world,
is an endlessly deceptive form of representation. As an object it announces it presence, but
resists definition. It is, in the end, a
sealed world to which we bring meaning; a complex play of presence and absence.” p25
I had to read this a couple of times before I could agree
with the main idea. What is a
photo? In this case, it’s a representation
of the items the artist arranged for the purpose of photographing. Are there other possible meanings? Of course, and as Clarke suggests, we bring
those to the photograph. What’s problematic is not the subject, but
Clarke’s interpretation of it. He seems
to be forcing this little photo to make a big statement, and in language that
is less than clear.
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