"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite."
—William Blake
There's one more little point that needs to be made with regard to those three mystery pictures I posted two days ago, and the brief explanations of what they are. Most of you will know it already, but it bears articulating once in a while.
It's this: As long as a photograph is an accurate and truthful report of the lens image, with the usual sensible and expected connection to the world of visual appearances (i.e., not faked, fabricated or fudged), and if it was made thoughtfully and perceptively by a human being who is trying to show something or simply see "how something looks photographed," then most photographs—many, let's say—not all, but many—will have facts behind them. They will have meaning of some sort. There'll be a story there.
This is sort of a long and careful way of saying they're "of " something.
It's very easy to look at photographs and simply dismiss their implications. Oh, a guy with sticks on his back, what's he doing, collecting firewood? Oh, a woman in a weird costume. Where are her legs? Oh, some guy in a clown suit. Wait, is that the McDonald's logo? And then...closure. As in, we close down, slam the door, move on. Nothing more to see here.
Nothing? Actually, there's usually something more to see, if only we could know what it is.
Hit man
I wish I could find this, but I can't, so I'll just describe it. I have (somewhere) an old B&W 8x10 glossy that came from a newspaper archive that was being sold off on eBay. It's a simple picture—there's a middle aged man in a trench coat and a fedora hat standing by the back of an old car that has its trunk lid open. In the background is a grassy field, and there's an overcast sky.
But because it was a newspaper photograph, though, it has its caption pasted to the back, some notations and so forth. I was able to look up the story. Amazingly, the whole story was online, in a very long "enthusiast" account that took me a while to read. Turned out that a mob boss had ordered a hit. The hit man had done the job, but in removing identifiers from the body (including, if I remember correctly, the guy's head and his fingertips), he had left the label inside the victim's overcoat. It was a custom-made coat, and the haberdasher had a record of who bought the coat. The police were then able to identify the victim, and from that, detectives were able to deduce the identity of the mob boss who had ordered the hit. They didn't have enough to convict the guy, but the incident brought down a lot of heat on him, which he resented. So, to get the point across to other hit men, the mob boss had ordered the original hit man to be murdered, and then had his body left in the trunk of his car—stark naked. The message was, when you kill somebody for me, you'd better remove anything from his clothing that might help identify him. The picture was of a detective standing next to the hit man's car, in the trunk of which the body (which had been removed by then) had been found.
So the picture doesn't have a lot of information in it, but there's actually a lot of significance behind it. Sometimes the meaning is not contained in the photograph, but only adjacent to it.
Beauty and mystery
At the other end of the spectrum you can have pictures that are so mundane there seems to be no possible reason to look into the meaning of what they show. For example, as I look out my window right now, I see a little circular garden bed. There's a spheroid bush about three feet high. Next to the bush is a boulder. In front of the bush and the boulder is a a wire rod with a red reflector at the top, and in back of the bush and the boulder is a young, medium-sized deciduous tree with no leaves. What can you possibly say about that? It does form a sort of "composition," but there's nothing specifically interesting about it. No real reason to look into it. Nobody who's sane would have time for such a thing anyway.
But of course there are still facts there. The tree and the bush are of particular species, and you could identify them. Somebody planted the bush, and you might be able to find out who and when. The lawn is used for parking, and it's possible that the bush, boulder, and reflector were placed there to protect the tree when it was younger and smaller.
Just because the facts, the meanings, are trivial doesn't mean they're not present.
Trivial content is sometimes purposely pursued by photographers. This is evident in the "rocks and trees" genre of subject matter. Rocks and trees are just...pretty, and they're pleasant to look at. We're not intended to think "what species of tree is that?" Or "what type of rock is that and what is its composition and origin?" Or "where was this taken?" You're supposed to look at its beauty and mystery, its detail or color or tone, and take from it a feeling, and you're supposed to accept it as if its meaning were trivial and not worth pursuing. As if the subject were generic. And that's OK. The tree stands for the idea of tree. The rock stands for the idea of rock. But...drawings and paintings can be generic, but honest and authentic photographs almost never really are. Even if the photographer wanted you to look at them as though they are.
A famous rocks-and-trees photographer (whose work really is beautiful and pleasant to look at, so he succeeds) once submitted an article to the magazine I edited that featured a picture of an odd sort of whirly, figured, ridged formation in rough flat rock. He titled it something similar to "Family Crest" if memory serves, and it did kinda resemble that. I didn't think twice about it. But then, three weeks later, I received a letter from a reader. He was a geologist, and felt put out by the fact that we didn't understand what we had showed a picture of. He spent two pages explaining what it was called, how it formed, where they're typically found, how rare they are, who studies them, etc., etc. It was all very interesting. And of course it had gone right over the heads of both the photographer and myself.
The doors of perception
It pays, I think, to be alive to the fact that every picture at least contains the germ of its story, its facts, its meaning. We don't always know what any of those things are, but that doesn't mean they're not there. That's all. What I'm saying is, don't accept complete closure; always leave the door cracked; never assume you're seeing all there is to see. Because you almost never are.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)
Featured Comments from:
John Camp: "And sometimes, the complications of even straight photographs take you all over the place. When I was a reporter for the St. Paul newspapers, a photographer was sent out to take a photo of a fairly inane event—perhaps a fender-bender. For some reason, there was a shoe lying near by, and in a kind of silent protest against the inanity of the assignment, he tossed the shoe in the photo, which added a kind of mystery to the thing. Then, thinking that this bullet was not entirely spent, he put the shoe in his car and took it back to the paper. Thereafter, photographers being hurried off on inane assignments (of almost any kind) would sometimes take the shoe with them and subtly insert it into a photo. It became known simply as The Shoe. If you have nothing better to do, it's mildly interesting to contemplate the meaning of The Shoe. Those photos were (some of them anyway) moved online, and if a super-AI sometime in the future begins scanning those photos and finds an identical shoe in many totally unrelated photos, I wonder what it will conclude?"
Speed: "Since you were unable to find the photograph that is subject of today’s TOP post, I asked Midjourney to create several based on your description."
Mike replies: From today, photography is dead! —Mike "Paul D." Johnston
Terry Burnes: "We moved to our current house about 20 years ago and had it landscaped. When that was done I took some rather mundane photos to document the finished project. I recently came across those photos and was struck by how much things have changed. I'm glad I took those mundane photos and, though not intended to do so, they did in fact end up telling part of a story, about our life here and how it has evolved, a story that continues for now."
JOHN B GILLOOLY: "I love this post and the types of photographs that is speaks to. My favorite photographs are those that evolve over time because the story evolves. The location changes, the people age and all of the 'information' in the photograph evolves and changes in unpredictable ways. I remember Jay Maisel speaking of the 'information' in a photograph—I had never thought of it as that. In many ways it changed how I view and photograph scenes, trying to be more mindful of not just the visual elements of a scene, but what information is in those elements."
Mike wrote, "At the other end of the spectrum you can have pictures that are so mundane there seems to be no possible reason to look into the meaning of what they show."
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks perhaps? One of my favorites.
Posted by: Speed | Thursday, 29 February 2024 at 04:40 PM
I find it helpful to have captions added to the photos.
Posted by: Herman Krieger | Thursday, 29 February 2024 at 05:18 PM
A very "Zen And The Art Of Photography" post, I was thinking while reading it. I and had to double-check if there was a book of that name, and yep... https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Photography-Robert-Leverant/dp/0960037403
Then I thought your insight could be compiled into The Tao of Photography, but nope... https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Photography-Seeing-Beyond/dp/1580081940
All There Is To See is a good title.
Posted by: John Krumm | Thursday, 29 February 2024 at 05:30 PM
Is it ok to extend the story even further, this time into fiction? In one of the Keller novels by Lawrence Block, a mob boss wants to eliminate Keller (contract killer and main protagonist of the series) because he might know too much.
But then, doesn't the guy he hires to kill Keller end up knowing too much?
Posted by: Robert Roaldi | Thursday, 29 February 2024 at 09:57 PM
“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.” ― Dorothea Lange
Posted by: Anthony | Thursday, 29 February 2024 at 10:15 PM
"It pays, I think, to be alive to the fact that every picture at least contains the germ of its story, its facts, its meaning."
Your usage/meaning of "meaning" is pretty close to opposite of mine.
Any thing, including a photograph, may have a story, antecedents, causes and parallel events, associated things. But it has no meaning, in the way I understand the word, until viewing it causes a response in a human mind.
Miriam-Webster seems to agree with me.
This response, in art, is the meaning.
Posted by: Moose | Friday, 01 March 2024 at 01:04 AM
Those featured comments by Terry Burnes and John B Gillooly speak to the added meaning we can attach to even ordinary photographs as time passes. Check out this beautiful set of photographs from a road adventure made in 1978. All sorts of meanings can be given to the photographs now. I dare you not to!
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1nTzPcg_VZ/
Posted by: Rod S. | Friday, 01 March 2024 at 02:01 AM
Classic post! One of your very best…IMHO!
Posted by: DaveB | Friday, 01 March 2024 at 05:18 AM
tl; dr version: "Stop to smell the roses -- and then think about them a bit."
I don't think the manufactured photos sent by Speed signify the end of photography, as you commented tongue-in-cheek. There are some basic descriptions it didn't follow; the photos are not in B&W, there's too much stuff in the trunk to allow carrying a body, etc. AI won't think for you.
Terry Burnes made a good point. Sometimes all a photo has to show is the passage of time. (I regret not taking photos of stores and businesses that had been around for all of my childhood, but are no longer existent.)
That reminds me of the line in Rush's song, Tom Saywer: "He knows changes aren’t permanent – But change is . . . "
Herman Krieger's photo and caption were terrific!
That was a thought-provoking post. Thanks Mike!
Posted by: Dave | Friday, 01 March 2024 at 09:17 AM
Re: Speed’s remarkable Midjourney-generated images…
My long-gone 8th grade English teacher’s recital of this old saw echoes in my brain: “If you can’t say what you mean you won’t mean what you say!” I wonder if language teachers everywhere are secretly cheering the shift from Pentax to syntax?
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Friday, 01 March 2024 at 10:37 AM
I don’t think we can discount the idea of image as Rorschach Test.
I once showed this image (https://www.jimmyreinaphoto.com/Galleries/Gallery/Gallery/i-jn7b6tH/A) to a critique group, where one participant commented on the subject’s weight/body, several expressed their empathy for what they assumed was a homeless person, and I believe one thought I was mocking the sitter.
I thought of it as nothing more than an interesting shot of someone sitting at a bus stop against a colorful wall illuminated by morning light, and displaying a quirky sign. My own assumption was that the sitter was probably waiting for a bus that would take them to or from work.
I would not be surprised if pre Led Zeppelin viewers of "A Wiltshire Thatcher" might have worried about the long term effects on his back from carrying a load that way.
Posted by: Jimmy Reina | Friday, 01 March 2024 at 12:57 PM
The included Blake "doors of perception" quotation made me think of the rock band The Doors. Copilot returned this:
The rock band The Doors derived their name from the autobiographical book titled “The Doors of Perception” written by English writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley. This book, published in 1954, chronicles Huxley’s experiences with mescaline, a hallucinogenic drug similar to LSD. In “The Doors of Perception,” Huxley explores altered states of consciousness and the idea that such experiences can provide different perspectives on life. The title itself is inspired by a line from English poet William Blake’s work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.”
Posted by: jp41 | Saturday, 02 March 2024 at 01:00 PM