Interacting with Photographs

Arranging photographs in books and newspapers is subject to the graphic possibilities and limitations of each medium. Photographs are used in a variety of other contexts in other forms as well, so there must be other graphic and conceptual conditions and relationships that exist as a result. After reading Clive Scott's penetrating analysis of captions that accompany photographs in newspapers ("The Behaviour of Captions In The Press," in The Spoken Image, 1999), I have been noticing photographs in contexts other than mounted or photojournalistic, and I keep wondering what they are doing there, what is their purpose. It occurs to me that there are larger conceptual implications at play, and that I have a role not only in deciphering them but also in coexisting with them. These photographic instances enhance our lives by engaging with and inspiring the production of meaning, and their use implicates us in a process of association in a continually expanding network of significance. Our interaction with photographs is thus connected to how we identify ourselves and the world around us.

This interaction occurs on many levels. For example, what about holding photographs? If I am able to hold a printed photograph, whether in a newspaper or on the cover of a portable book, how is my relationship with the photograph affected? Do I assert a certain power over it, or do I compound the effect of illusion by realizing that there is no referent behind it, only the back of the paper it is printed on? The latter seems silly, but are we absolutely convinced that the photograph contains nothing of the reality it depicts? And can I possess a photograph by touching it? If I carry a paperback with a photograph on the cover, does my contact and association with the photograph infer that I own it, or at least part of it? Or is it firmly anchored to the medium it adorns?

What does it mean to have a photograph on the cover of a novel? How does the text (title, author, publisher, book price, etc.) activate or obscure reading the photograph? Is it truly a "photograph," or has it been relegated to a simpler graphic purpose, one that acts as support material for another medium's message? Is it an instance of ekphrasis, whereby the reader's experience is affected by one medium's attempt to summarize another medium's message?

In the case of a paperback novel, how often do we turn back to the cover to search for meaning deep in the image, to search for the proof of that which we have been reading up to that point? To what degree does the cover photograph become the metonymical representation of the book, and why is it assumed that this is not problematic?

Scott's analysis of punctuation in photograph captions gives us the ability to discover some interesting things. His analysis of the use of the colon, for instance, as a mirroring device that coordinates meaning and allows it to be reversed, so that "X:(is) Y and Y:(is) X," can be applied to this Dylan Thomas book. As the back cover states, "The 'young dog' of the title is of course Thomas himself." But that is not exactly what the caption is suggesting. In fact, Thomas is much more than the dog; he is the "portrait of the artist as a young dog," as much as that portrait is "Dylan Thomas." In this case, such a larger association is befitting, as the book contains "autobiographical stories by the great modern poet." There is also the graphic presentation - as we descend from the image of a human to the image of a canine, we also descend grammatically from an individual artist to a generic animal. The black and white shift we encounter as we make this descent suggests an inversion, as though we can expect things to be turned on their heads. The line that separates the black and white areas is itself a mirroring device, allowing for reversals and coordination above and below. The repetition of the cigarette allows us to connect Thomas with the young dog, but it also permits us to see the young dog in Thomas as our eyes wander back up to the author.