Jodi asked:

I have a interest in photography and I have an interest for learning more about philosophy. Through
examining the ask a philosopher website I wanted to take a closer look into photography and
philosophy.

My question to you is: Do you feel that photographs can or can not engender understanding? I mean
many people debate whether photographs can be understood or have meaning like text can. Like
Susan Sontag stated in her book On Photographythat photographs can't engender understanding
and by looking at a picture you can not get a complete understanding of the subjects involved like you
can with a text. I was wondering how you felt about this subject?

I know this is not a simple question. But what true philosophy question is?

I have formed many opinions concerning this topic and just wanted someone else's point of view.

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As you have no doubt seen on the Ask a Philosopher website, I lay no claim to being an expert on
photography, though I enjoy taking photographs. Your question is rather more complex than it
appears at face value. Can photographs engender understanding? In some cases the answer is yes,
in others the answer is no. Consider a picture deliberately produced to instruct us to do something,
say, scissors on a dotted line; this requires no language, the instruction is self evident. Historic
pictures, if we know our history, can show us how things were in the past, we could work out the
period and the event, or we could make a very good guess at what is going on. However, the more
complex the picture, the more things happening, and the more in need we may be of words to
describe the total scene. Therefore, the picture might give us a general, overall, view, but may fall
short in coming to terms with specific conclusions. Hence, we are, in general, using our
pre-conceived knowledge to interpret overall views, but for specific events within the overall view we
often need some assistance from word description.

There is no doubt that a photographer by skillful use of the medium can compose pictures that say a
great deal, and often a photograph without a caption can press home the point and leave no doubt in
the mind what the photograph is telling us. but, again, there can be specifics within the picture which
leave us wondering, e.g. Is the man on the sidewalk involved in what is going on? Why is the little girl
running away? etc.. Unless the photographer fully describes what is going on we are bound to be
dependent on imagination and guesswork in some instances.

So, to deal with your question of whether one can get a complete understanding of the subjects
involved in a picture, I would say that it depends upon the simplicity of the subject content, the more
complex the subject matter the more vague our understanding. I am, of course, referring to pictures
which set out to describe an event, or, in other words, to make a statement about reality. However, as
I have said elsewhere, a photographer is an artist in his/her own right, quite capable of constructing a
photograph with form and meaning which is a genuine work of art, such a photograph would be open
to interpretation ; whether we could properly interpret the photographer's subjective impressions
would depend on confirmation by the artist. However, works of art are there to give pleasure or to
encourage the observer to think. Photographs of natural scenery, photographs of gardens, could,
without captions, say something to us, but if we were curious to know the location we would need a
caption.

During the Second World War two of the finest illustrated magazines were Picture Postand War
Illustrated.The photography was superb, and some would claim that the impact they produced
required no captions. However, it was war, and in wars ships catch fire, bombs explode, guns fire
missiles, soldiers are killed, aircraft crash in flames, people lose their homes, etc.. All these things are
self evident, the question to be asked is, Where is it happening? During the war we would have been
forced to ask, Is it in Warsaw? Is it in Paris? Is it in the Atlantic? Is it in the Pacific? and so on. This I
believe usefully describes what I mean by the seeming vague answer to your question — Can
photographs engender understanding? In some cases the answer is yes, in others the answer is no.

John Brandon

I do not know very much about photography as a craft; but I do have an opinion about the statement
you attribute to Sontag, above. Now, I must also offer the disclaimer that I do not have Sontag's book,
so I cannot check the context of that statement; thus, I will be responding only to you, and not,
perhaps, to Sontag's argument... unless that does happen to correspond to what you say above.

Ok. How does text have meaning? A good question, and one which has occupied people for
centuries. "Deconstruction" is only the latest aspect of the hermeneutics tradition. That tradition
started, more or less, in Medieval times as the analysis of the interpretation of religious texts.
Hermeneutics has been broadened to include anything termed "text" these days, which, if you are
Derrida, at least, does indeed include paintings and photographs (e.g., see his Memoirs of the Blind).
The literature on hermeneutics is quite extensive, and it's a field I'm only peripherally interested in...
but given all my disclaimers, here's my position on your question: text, as the written word, is just as
metaphorical (and I'm using the term "metaphorical" in the general sense that Lakoff et al — see
below — use it), undefinable, vague, and infinitely dense as are photographs. My position comes
from consideration of Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Mark Turner, and Fauconnier's writings, and others
(including Derrida). Now, as far as formallanguages go, thattext is about as non-metaphorical, i.e.,
as literal and interpretable as text can be. That is, formal logic, mathematics, computer programming
languages, and similar formal languages are indeed completely understandable (or as
understandable as we can get... Lakoff actually disagrees with this, and I think he may be right).
That's all very fine, but in naturallanguages like English, we are immersed in an enormous web of
metaphorical words, phrases, meanings, and so forth. The result of this is that we must to some
extent agree with Quine, at least, as to the web of relationships which define linguistic terms (and the
people above go much further than he does). Given that, we do not in any sense understand text
more "completely" than we do, say, photography.

There are many counterarguments I could bring up to my own points, e.g., photography is not a
language as natural languages are, and thus has no general description (grammar and syntax)... etc,
etc... but I could argue against that one pretty easily in terms of visual gestalts and cultural
assumptions. And on and on. The upshot is that to defend a position such as that which you attribute
to Sontag requires a particular understanding of language which is at this point quite controversial,
and which has been strongly argued against.

Steven Ravett Brown

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