The many lives of a photo

Orange dawn and red traffic lights motivate the snapshot, but the eyes see unlike the lens and sensor do.

In his book, Camera Lucida (1981), Roland Barthes (1915-80) distinguishes between what the photographer (the operator) sees, what the camera sees (lens, film, chemical processing), and what the viewer sees. On this early morning drive, stopped at this intersection, two things came to mind. One is the way that the camera’s record of the light (objective vision) differs to what a person sees at the moment (subjective vision). That observation is a separate blog article. The other thing that comes to mind is the many layers of meaning in the scene in the distinctions that Barthes points out. But in addition to his three facets, there are still more. First is the dawn scene itself, regardless of there being any admiring humans or other creatures that notice it. Second is my attention being drawn to it; something about the light, lines, colors and so on makes me recognize wonder or beauty somewhere in the surroundings of those fleeting minutes. Third is my desire to make a photo to ratify this beauty and to share it with others. Fourth is what the camera sees –a skillful photographer could translate the human emotional responses or meanings of the moment into terms that a lens can “write with light.” Fifth is the result of the camera work that then is seen by the viewers of the two-dimensional representation of the fast-changing light of dawn’s early light. Sixth is what the photographer sees secondarily; not by direct vision at the time of recording the scene but now sandwiching those memories with the subsequent experience of handling the printed (color) picture. Seventh is what other viewers see who are removed in time or geography from the original subject and time; for example, people seeing the photo a generation after it was made, or people from a faraway language and culture. Since these latter-day viewers may lack the context to know or appreciate what they are seeing, the viewing experience may differ considerably from what people see who are connected more closely to the place or event.

Layers of meaning pertain not only to pictures made by camera, but also in other life experiences. The story of Macbeth with tellings of events through the eyes of different characters, or the Japanese interpretation in the Kurosawa film, Rashomon, whence the “rashomon effect” of multiple versions of events according to each character’s point of view. The above photo has the seven (or more) lives described above, but that could be said of displays encountered in a museum, advertisements presented in print or on TV, appliances or automobiles (concept, design, production, reviewer, promoter, buyer new and subsequent buyer used, mechanic’s point of view, insurance adjuster point of view, and so on). So while a photo has many lives, so do most parts of one’s experience going through life.

Seeing the many lives of this otter entrapped

Collage of oil painting detail and part of the label text at the Milwaukee Art Museum, mam.org, 3 July 2022

Although the otter in this portrait by Audubon lived and died (and presumably was skinned) long ago, the grimace shown and the layers of meaning contained in the painting process still touch viewers just as freshly as the day when the last brush stroke was applied to the canvas. According to the label text the subject presented itself to the 27-year-old artist in Kentucky in 1812, at which point he recorded the scene in watercolor. Over the years he interpreted the scene again and again in oil paintings, later still as lithograph and distributed in published form to wider audiences. Once the scene and its accompanying story (or stripped of story but used as an illustration for another author’s purpose) enter the public stream of discussion and popular imagination, then the scope and the longevity of the meaning expand greatly from that original watercolor of 1812. What began as a violent and prolonged real-life killing of an otter in Kentucky later became part of art gallery interiors, private residences, and through printed form it entered the public mind. Since the 1990s in USA, perhaps, the fashion for wearing animal skins and furs has shrunk greatly. Showing one’s wealth and power now seems a sad and cruel enterprise to be wrapped up with.

For the purpose of the See-to-Think blog articles, though, these several versions of the subject and the response by those who interact with it is worth thinking about. A composition may begin for one reason (what catches one’s eye or sparks one’s imagination) but later it may serve other purposes, some of which have unintended consequence or possibly contradictory applications long after the maker is gone. Thinkers who deal with material culture, “the life of things,” such as archaeologists and museum curators, know the ways in which a given object in the context of its time and place can take on new meanings as times (or place of display/use/study) change. The piece then is viewed in a new light. What today means one thing can later go one to mean something different, even something diametrically opposed. For example, the otter trapping oil painting framed in gilt could appear as a fur-lover’s celebration in 1827, but seeing this in 2022 it could look like condemnation of 1800s animal cruelty framed in guilt.

In his book about rockpool life observed on Scotland’s west coast, Adam Nicholson has a chapter about the anemone’s place in the interactive miniature community of the intertidal zone of life. He quotes the ideas of ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, that “…nothing in existence is fundamental. Only in connection does meaning occur. And the observer is necessarily part of that web.” [emphasis added] Turning to Audubon’s “Entrapped Otter,” the casual art gallery visitor or the scholarly interpreter of the painting completes the picture that began with the 1812 suffering of the otter in Kentucky that Audubon began with. The many versions that followed and the ways that viewers interacted with the scene supplied this Heraclitan part of the relationship between image and its engagement with the mind or heart of the wider society. Clearly, to see is to think, whether by automatic habit, or by careful reflection. The many versions of an image may affect the viewing experience alright, but perhaps more importantly it is the viewer’s own preoccupations that color the meaning, since –as Heraclitus observed a very long time ago– the observer is necessarily part of that web [by which meaning occurs]. Indeed, readers of this blog article, too, have now become part of the web.