Fact, Truth, and Meaning in Photographs

Thinkers about photography sometimes work on the problem of whether a photograph is experienced in the way it was intended by the image maker. In some contexts, a mismatch is deemed a failure, but in others it is simply another dimension of experience in communications and may have what we often call "its own life" independently of the imagist with no presumed value judgement of good or bad.

But implicit in viewing is that there will be a reaction to what is seen, and that raises the question of whether the imagist also intended a certain reaction or instead was not concerned about that. This aspect of the matter quickly dives into ethics and into whether the image has one kind of value or another when viewed.

The matter of intention can also be complicated if there is no distinction known between the imagist knowing what it is and the viewer knowing what it is. Necessarily, viewers get the final word, because an unseen image is useless until it is seen. This asks whether the "responsibility" for what the reaction includes is mostly or even all on the viewer.

In those ways, we realize that "responsibility" is a wholly different discussion from determining what kind of image is at hand. Here, the idea of mode is most useful because it concerns how the image was produced, and it supports an exploration and discussion about how one mode or another can be knowingly instrumental as expressive options for the image-maker. In this matter, "truth" is not an important topic; instead, how visual facts are "created" as material and then treated as image elements is the distinguishing concept.

We might even press the issue a bit more rigorously by saying "visual artifacts" instead of visual facts. A visual artifact can mean (signify) different things to different people; yet there is also some degree of commonality established when a community agrees on a conventional meaning for a certain artifact and, further, desires the convention to be the default offer by the image-maker. The maker, particularly an experimental or innovative one, may or may not attempt to satisfy that convention.