Snapshot

“We are far from wanting to mystify...The photographs of this sequence are not intended to be documentary. That is to say they do not document the woman’s life, not even her subjective life. We have tried here to speak this language so as not only to illustrate, but also to articulate a lived experience...All photographs use the language of appearances....She was making sense of herself to herself.” --- Berger, 133 and 134.

Forgive me. I have presented this “quote” out of order and omitted huge chunks of it as well. By doing so, I have done what photographs do, though I acknowledge this only as an after-thought. But these lines from Berger, taken in this order, represent the most provocative quote. For me. They make sense to me for me in this particular order. That is to say, that I agree with Berger’s statements about what photographs can and cannot do. They can reveal a historical moment. They can disrupt history. They are a stick in a river. But they can never articulate fully the thoughts of those whose experiences they attempt to capture, if in fact they attempt that at all. The wise photographer knows this, and knows better than to assume she can do it. The wise viewer ought to recognize this fact, too, but often we do not. As Foss writes, “[l]ay viewers’ responses to visual artifacts are assumed to be constructed on the basis of viewers’ own experiences and knowledge, developed from living and looking in the world,” (306). We try to understand images using the tools we have. As my dad often told me, “wherever you go, there you are.” Even as readers, writers, and viewers, wherever we go, there we are. Maybe, especially so.

I once took a photography class at an art school near my home. The professional photographer and collage artist who taught the course despised the word “snapshot” and therefore forbade his students from using it. His repulsion for the word was grounded in the fact that it represented a layman’s point of view: “we do not take ‘snapshots,’” he said. “We take photographs.” As an artist, he demanded (understandably) a more  respectable, sophisticated word to represent the work of the photographer, and he insisted that his students begin to develop a vocabulary, as well as an understanding of the art of photography. Yet now, when I look at Berger’s photographs and read Berger, I can’t help but think word “snapshot” is an apt, if not excellent, word. Why do I say this? Because the verb snap fairly well captures (albeit in lay terms) the action that occurs when a photographer takes a picture, and the noun shot is what we, the viewers, really all get to see. When we view a photograph or an image, we always get a “palimpsest” that is both “transtextual and intertextual” (Genette), but which fails even in its best attempts--even when the “moment” is captured by a professional, talented, artist photographer--to fully articulate, explain, interpret, know. As Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, said in a 1974 interview with Playboy, “we do fail if we attempt art... [i]t’s a sense of things passing—so regretful, regretful—of things being beautiful yet mortal, that makes life worth living” (86).

Photographs show one millisecond of a life or of many lives, but they cannot capture their individual meanings, any more than a person’s own narrative can. Words are merely inexact signs or representations of thoughts and things, but they fail even when they do their best to represent. Yet, upon what else can we lean? All we have are words and images (add sounds--music, laughter, sobs; add the tactile--touch) when we attempt to make meaning with others (thinking about I.A. Richards and Burke and Derrida here). We cannot accurately articulate our thoughts, but we must make the attempt. Berger writes, “[t]here are photographs included of moments and scenes which she could never have witnessed” (134). He is writing about scenes and moments of photographs taken in Paris and Istanbul here. But even the photographs OF the woman herself are scenes she could “never have witnessed” because of the angles they represent. Sure, those are her hands knitting, so we might assume she witnessed her own hands knitting (if we also assume she is sighted). But she could never have witnessed them from the angle from which the photographer witnesses them. She makes sense of herself to herself, and that is the bit we can never know, even when the photograph shows us that she is knitting, and we can read or take knowledge from the photo--her fingernails, her hands, her ability to knit--these are things we can see. But her desire or intention or her interest in knitting--we can never know. Even if she tells us these things, we can only hear what she says at the moment, but her narrative, if we were to ask her, “what are you thinking about” (133), would be “simple,” “because the question, when taken seriously, becomes unanswerable. Her reflections cannot be defined by any answer to a question beginning with What?” (133). 

I read Christine’s post this morning about her recent research which focuses (pun--ouch) on “photographs on Facebook to commemorate those who have passed away” and it occurred to me that my own profile picture at this moment is one of those. Here it is:

My dad and me. Taken on January 16, 2011, my 48th birthday, at my home in Seminole, Florida. In my kitchen to be exact. It’s blurry, and I’ve messed with the original color so it now appears in sepia tones, but it is the last and best (recent) picture I have of us together. According to Foss, “[v]isual rhetoric as artifact, then, is the purposive production or arrangement of colors, forms, and other elements to communicate to an audience” (Foss, 304). What does it communicate? What is my purpose for posting it? What am I trying to say by posting it, cropping it, changing its color? How does it function? I posted it to Facebook on or around Father’s Day 2011, but just put it back up yesterday because yesterday was the third Saturday in September, and last year on the third Saturday in September, I was awakened at 6:47 a.m. by a phone call from my mom. Through blurry eyes, I saw that my iPhone read, “Mom and Dad” and I knew in that split second before I answered the phone I would hear one of two voices delivering some sort of bad news. In that split second I remember thinking “maybe there will be time” -- for me to get there (Michigan). Maybe one of them was rushed to the hospital. I hope there will be time. I can go there today and help mom/dad get through this. “Hello?” “Martha, dad’s gone.” “What! My dad? What? Mom! What? My dad?” The actual anniversary is this Monday, September 17th. But it was the third Saturday morning in September last year, at daybreak, when mom called. I remember the light in my bedroom, just before the sun came up. 

So, this picture. “When particular objects are given enough presence, they can crowd out other considerations from the viewer’s mind, regardless of the logical force or relevance of those other considerations” (Hill, 119). It was taken on my birthday, several months before September 17, 2011. We laughed a lot that night. We danced in my living room. Whenever my dad laughed--which was often-- he threw back his head, his smile was wide, his laugh was nearly silent--but his levity was contagious. This moment caught on film was a moment of levity. But now, on Facebook, that moment is crowded out by other considerations. For those who see it this weekend, it commemorates his passing more than his joy. Yet, thinking about Christine’s research, I’m interested in this passage in particular: “A photo of a person who is no longer alive often garners written feedback expressing how the photo has impacted a viewer, reminded a viewer of a specific memory, and/or caused the viewer to react with happiness or sorrow. In this context, the photographs become a component of history (it is a picture of someone who is no longer with us) while at the same time allowing the viewers to hold on to a piece of that person...” She is correct in that this picture allows me to hold on to a piece of my dad, but I could hold on to that piece without the photo. Or, could I hold on to a piece of him without it? I can’t articulate what that piece looks like or the shape of it, or how it comes in large and small doses, or of how memories fade or become vivid at different moments. Can a viewer of this photograph understand what it means to me? He or she can try, certainly. But I can’t understand it. I can’t articulate it.

I did not add commentary when I made this photo my profile picture yesterday. My sister commented only with a heart emoticon. I replied with the same. We knew and didn’t know what that meant: it meant everything but nothing we could articulate fully. A couple of family members and close friends who’ve known my dad forever wrote short sentiments, but my sister and I did not. Foss writes, “[t]he world produced by visual rhetoric is not always--or even often--clear, well organized, or rational, but is, instead, a world made up of human experiences that are messy, emotional, fragmented, silly, serious, and disorganized” (310). In the case of my picture of my dad and me, all of these things exist, for me. She was making sense of herself to herself. 

Post script: I cannot locate the *real* photograph, the photograph that existed before I cropped out my husband and my mother, the photograph that existed before I changed the color, the photograph which probably captures the moment more completely, and reads very differently, in and out of context. In its place I give you this, a photograph of my parents and my cousin and his friend.


In this un-retouched photo, also taken in my kitchen on another night of levity, my father is laughing. This is something I remember about him, and it’s something I thought of even as I posted the other photo yesterday, the one of the two of us together.

Purpose and function are two different pieces of the pie.

She was making sense of herself to herself.