Click to access B_PhotAndCont_97.pdf
Much of this essay looks at an image created by Robert Doisneau.
Robert Doisneau. At the Café, Chez Fraysse, Rue de Seine, Paris 1958
Terry Barrett in an essay1 tells us that Doisneau liked cafes, and seeing these two people together at the bar of one such cafe, asked if they would mind him taking their photograph. After which he goes on to tell us, in précis, the image was used in a number of publications (without Doisneau’s permission) with a widely differing demographic. The image is open to many interpretations, all of which are based on the context which surrounds (both literally and pictorially) them.
What we see is a relationship/interaction between a man and a woman. Beyond that the image can tell us nothing, everything else is supposition. The publications mentioned above use this picture, in one to illustrate or support an article about the evils of alcohol, and another to fortify an article about prostitution. It is easy to read either or both scenarios into this image, and many more besides. And so we begin to get an idea about how fragile the perception, or intended perception of an image can be, solely based on the paraphernalia contained within & surrounding that image and how context is added whether it is overtly deliberate or covertly subliminal. Barrett goes on to tell us that three sources of information which are available to us, and these will affect how we read a picture; He calls them ‘Internal context, external context & original context’. That is to say, information contained within the image, Information surrounding the image and information about how the image was made.
In Roland Barthes’ book Image Music Text2 Barthes spends the first three chapters going into great detail about semiotics, which in turn are the ‘undercover agents’ of context.
References
1. Photographs and Contexts (being an excerpt from Aesthetics: A reader in Philosophy of the arts, David Goldblatt & Lee Brown, editors. Prentice-Hall 1997.
2. Barthes, R. (1977). Image Music Text. London: Harper Collins Publishers.
I see! 