The ambiguity of the photograph – John Berger
in Understanding a Photograph, Chapter appearances (Berger, 2008)
Whilst responding to the below exercise I was directed in one of the blogs to Berger’s chapter Appearances in his book Understanding a Photograph (2013). This book is a collection of essays across 40 years. These are some of the interesting points the chapter raised for me:
- All photographs are of the past and “give us two messages: a message concerning the event photographed and another concerning a shock of discontinuity” (p86) as there is a large gap between the taking and the viewing.
- The ambiguity of a photograph is because of this discontinuity as they preserve a moment in time as a disconnected instant; yet meaning isn’t instantaneous but contextual and historical.
- For a photograph to have meaning it must have a duration beyond itself, both a past and a future.
- So all photographs are ambiguous as they are taken out of a continuity; though this can give them a unique means of expression.
- Berger asks whether photographs are an artefact, or a trace left by light that has passed through an object?
- A photographer only choses an instant to take the image in the present and therefore has weak intentionality. The photographer does choose the event to capture and how to represent it, this roots the intention it the context of his life and experience. But this doesn’t alter the fact that a photograph is actually just a trace of light passing through a lens and imprinting on a film.
- Berger points out some differences between photographic representations and drawn ones:
| Photograph | Drawing |
| Instantaneous | Made over time |
| Time is uniform across all elements in the photograph | The artist can apportion time as they wish to different elements of the image |
| It’s representation is not impregnated by consciousness or experience – they supply information without a language of their own |
- So it seems that the camera cannot lie and a photograph cannot although paradoxically the truth it tells may be limited by the photographer. Berger cites some different purposes for photographs and how this can affect their truthfulness: Scientific investigation, public communication, the media. In science the photograph supplies missing detail, where as in communication and media the truth is more complicated.
- Photographs “quote from appearances” (p128), are discontinuous and therefore ambiguous though this can be reduced by text/information. You can use this discontinuity to make photographs expressive, as broken narrative causes viewers to ascribe meaning.
If I take Berger’s assertion that “a photograph is actually just a trace of light passing through a lens and imprinting on a film”, then even if taking account their context and discontinuity from the moment they are shot they are documents.
Reference:
Berger, John. (2008). Understanding a Photograph. [Kindle edition] From: Amazon.co.uk (accessed 2.4.30)
Photography 2: Documentary 