1.
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Berger, John, “Understanding Photography”, in Trachtenberg, Alan, ea.,
Classic Essays on Photography
(New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 1980), p. 293.
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2.
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Berger, John,
About Looking.
(New York: Pantheon Books. 1980), p. 51
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3.
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Berger, in Trachtenberg, ea.,
Classic Essays. . .
, p. 294.
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4.
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Berger,
About Looking
, pp. 51, 52 & 56. Berger defines the private photograph as one which is “appreciated and read in a context
which is continuous with that from which the camera removed it
. . . The contemporary public photograph usually presents an event, a seized set of appearances , which [at first glance] has nothing to do with us its readers, or with the original meaning of the event. It offers information, but information severed from all lived experience.” Later in his essay he adds that “the [private] photograph lives in an ongoing continuity. . . . The public photograph, by contrast, is torn from its context, and . . . lends itself to any arbitrary use.”
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5.
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Hunter, Jefferson,
Image and Word
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 1. Hunter is the first literary critic who I have come across who refers to photographerwriter collaborations as ‘photo texts’. Photo texts are “composite publications evoking a landscape or recording a history, celebrating a community or mourning a loss. The words and photographs contribute equally to their meaning; that is how the genre is defined.”
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6.
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Agee, James and Evans, Walker,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Co., 1966), p. xv.
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7.
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Ibid., p. 11.
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8.
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Ibid., p. 12.
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9.
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Condon, William S., ‘‘Communication and Empathy” in Lichtenberg, Joseph, et al ea.,
Empathy II
(Hillsdale, N.J.: The Analytic Press, 1984), pp. 35 & 37.
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10.
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Berger,
About Looking
, p. 57.
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11.
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Kracauer, Siegfreid, “Photography” in Trachtenberg, ed.
Classic Essays..
., pp. 260 & 265.
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12.
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Stott, William,
Documentary Expression and Thirties America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 278.
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13.
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Ibid., pp. 276 & 288.
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14.
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Hunter,
Image and Word
, pp. 74 & 75.
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15.
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Stott,
Documentary Expression
. . ., p. 269. The words are Evans’s own description of his photography. According to Stott, “ ‘transcendent documentary photography’ is the making of images whose meanings surpass the local circumstances that provided their occasion.” Berger seems to intimate that all public photographs have this possibility. (See Note 4. ) However, Stott’s choice of words gives public photographs a more positive connotation.
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16.
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Ibid., p. 270; Janet Malcolm’s article, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Pa.”,
New Yorker
, August 6, 1979, provides a discussion of the possible differences of interpretation based on print quality. This article is also useful as an example of a
VISUAL READING
activity.
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17.
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Shloss, Carol,
In Visible Light
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 195. As in Note 16 a difference of interpretation can be found in Stott,
Documentary Expression
. . . pp. 284—287, this time in relation to a photograph taken by Evans but not included in Book I. Stott comments that although it is the picture which presents the tenants “as they really want to be seen, . . . [t]he portrait, . . . has a meaning more ultimate than has been hinted at. . . . It is the ‘nostalgia,’ the ‘terror,’ the ‘infinite sadness,’ the ‘silence,’ much remarked upon in his [Evans’s] art.” [p.287].
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18.
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Stott,
Documentary Expression
. . ., p.
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267.
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19.
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Ibid., p. 275. Berger suggests that the simple “minimal message of a photograph” is best understood by the statement: “I have decided that seeing this worth recording.” A more complex decoding of this minimal message would read like this: “the degree to which I believe this is worth looking at, can be judged by all that I am willingly not showing because it is contained within it.” (See Berger, “Understanding Photography”, in Trachtenberg, ea.,
Classic Essays
. . ., p. 294. ) Evans’s photographs and Agee’s writing evoke impressions which are not visible within the limit of the frame or explicit within the text. Poverty is suggested by what we do not see in the photograph. For example, the tenants do not own a camera; Shloss (In Visible Light, p. 194) considers it significant:
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