Meaning?
…He said he was drawn more by the rope than the boat. While he agreed that the boat conveyed a strong message of longing toward the mysterious, “unknown” horizon, he suggested that the rope injects a deeper melancholy by reminding the viewer that even if the boat were seaworthy (which it may not be), the rope might still prevent a traveler from using it to escape. The two combined – dilapidated boat & rope – were enough to elicit very strong memories of his “longing for escape from entrapment” in his youth.
The above quote came from the blog, Tao of Photography. Andy, the blog’s author, was talking about an exhibit that he had a book store and about a particular comment that one of the viewers, who happened to be a local psychiatrist made about a particular image. You can see the image if you click on the link.
Anyway, it got me to thinking about various interpretations of my images that have come along upon showing them to someone. Sometimes I take pictures of pretty things, sometimes abstract things, sometimes people, other times landscapes, and yet other times landscapes with people, as in the above shot. Personally, I love to see lots and lots of sky in a picture, giving the picture a since of great height, for whatever reason. I guess that I’ve always been fascinated by clouds and space, which is why most of pictures seem to be taken vertically.
Meaning, I guess, depends on the mood or experiences of the viewer as to their interpretation, similar to what one might see in a Rorschach ink blot test. One might view the above picture as a stormy day, another as lonely, and yet another a beautiful morning walk. Who knows how it will be viewed. It kind of reminds me of the high school English literature classes where we had to decide what the writer of a story or poem meant. There’s just no way to do it. Meaning, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. An image can have broad appeal, but I would imagine that not many of those that it appeals to will have the same interpretation of the image. Interesting, indeed!
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5 Responses to “Meaning”
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Hi Paul,
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I must say, I’m glad you did, since it gave me an opportunity to visit yours! Wonderful material, thoughtful, with beautiful images. I’ll have to make it a regular stop.
To answer the question you poses on my blog about how one gets a show…in truth, nothing but old-fashioned “chutzpah”
I learned the name of the person responsible for the “gallery walls” at Books & Books, send at email or two by way of introduction and asked for a convenient day to show a portfolio, and was lucky enough that she liked what she saw. The hard part, of course , is that last one: either someone likes what you have or not. Art, as you likely know, is far from objective. The other part (equally as important) is to not get too discouraged after you’ve heard a dozen or so people say something like, “Well, its nice, but not really what we’re after here.” Keep at it, and you’ll run across someone who likes (sometimes very much!) what you do; then keep going.
Merry Christmas my friend!
Nice photo you got there my friend!
I keep meaning to leave you a message about how much I really like this black and white image. Okay, so now I have! It is really, really nice. hmmmm, did I just say that, but I think that it needs repeating. I think that the people on the beach give it a bit of perspective and those clouds, wow! Very nicely done, amigo.
I think, we can learn a lot from music here. I mean, the composer wrote down the tune on a piece of paper. But the musican then adds another layer of interpretation to it. And how the reader perceives it is the last matter, which completes the chain.
In my mind, it’s the same in photography. First, the photographer records a picture. It is then “played” (post-processed, cropped, printed, framed…), often by the same person, and the complete piece of work then has a certain impact on the viewer, depending on his or her background, mood, history and the surroundings in which the shot is presented.
Thomas