Meaning # 3
Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 10:40AM 
Speaking of meaning, what the hell does this photograph mean?
gravitas et nugalis
publisher's comment: Ian P.'s response is a topic unto itself, so here it is in its entirety.
Featured Comment Ian P. wrote: I'll bite. To pick one particular definition of meaning...meaning: the idea that is intended to be conveyed
Presumably the photograph itself cannot form intent, so immediately we have the question of 'intended by whom'? At least three possibilities come to my mind here. The photographer (assuming that there was one, see later), an editor/image selector (for example if this is a photograph to show as news then there probably was a selector involved), or the poster (being one Mark Hobson)? There could well be other possibilities, and any combination of these possibilities could in fact be a single person.
Pooling from these three possibilities we could speculate at a number of ideas that were intended to be conveyed.
One idea that might have been intended by the image taker is the idea that a particular event took place. If we assume that this idea was the intent, then without any further context there are a number of things we might be willing to infer about the event from the image, but not many: Clearly an event took place somewhere in which someone was lying on the ground with a man with a gun standing over him, and a crowd of people standing behind the man with the gun. It looks like some of the crowd nearest the man lying on the ground were taking photographs or video using cell phones. Judging from the lighting this event took probably took place during daylight hours in sunlight.
Further speculation about the event without further information gets more difficult. Perhaps the man lying on the ground is sufficiently interesting that some of the crowd made the effort to take photos. However the event may have been staged, perhaps the photograph is a still shot from a movie set.
If the intent is judged from the point of view of an editor as the image selector then there is less that I would be willing to speculate about. It may have been selected to convey more realism to a news story. It may have been selected to convey the idea that the editor is good at choosing interesting photographs and knows some good photographers. It may have been selected to generate thoughts of interest about an up coming movie...
The intent of last possible intendor is perhaps the most interesting. From the context I would be willing to speculate that the image is intended to generate ideas about meaning within images and the role that context has on the meaning within an image.
In this context it is possible that the intended ideas have nothing what-so-ever to do with the actual image being displayed. For example, the image could have been selected at random from a large pool of images (such as available on the web) and displayed here through the use an automated script, so that the content of the image is completely unconnected to the selection of the image. It could even be possible, if rather unlikely, that the image itself was taken by some automatic process, for example an unusually high quality security camera, dumped into the universe of images available on the web and then selected completely at random using a script. If we were to find out that this was the case, then the meaning we would then form about the image really comes from the process and has no connection at all to the content of the image.
I have problems with the whole idea of meaning within art, I am not sure that I agree that the purpose of art is to convey ideas from artist to viewer so much as having to do with the generation of ideas in the viewer. That is, I do not like to think of art in terms of what is the idea that the artist is intending to convey, but rather I prefer to think in terms of what ideas or thought processes the artist is generating within the viewer. (I prefer thought process to ideas, and I am thinking of thought processes as being something less tangible than ideas, although idea is often defined in terms of thought processes. In a sense I am thinking of ideas as thought processes that can be thought about and communicated, and assuming that there are thought processes that cannot be or are very difficult to directly think about and communicate). Since the context in which a piece of art appears has an effect on the thought processes that the piece generates, context is an integral part of art.
Reader Comments (1)
I'll bite. To pick one particular definition of meaning...
meaning: the idea that is intended to be conveyed
Presumably the photograph itself cannot form intent, so immediately we have the question of 'intended by whom'? At least three possibilities come to my mind here. The photographer (assuming that there was one, see later), an editor/image selector (for example if this is a photograph to show as news then there probably was a selector involved), or the poster (being one Mark Hobson)? There could well be other possibilities, and any combination of these possibilities could in fact be a single person.
Pooling from these three possibilities we could speculate at a number of ideas that were intended to be conveyed.
One idea that might have been intended by the image taker is the idea that a particular event took place. If we assume that this idea was the intent, then without any further context there are a number of things we might be willing to infer about the event from the image, but not many: Clearly an event took place somewhere in which someone was lying on the ground with a man with a gun standing over him, and a crowd of people standing behind the man with the gun. It looks like some of the crowd nearest the man lying on the ground were taking photographs or video using cell phones. Judging from the lighting this event took probably took place during daylight hours in sunlight.
Further speculation about the event without further information gets more difficult. Perhaps the man lying on the ground is sufficiently interesting that some of the crowd made the effort to take photos. However the event may have been staged, perhaps the photograph is a still shot from a movie set.
If the intent is judged from the point of view of an editor as the image selector then there is less that I would be willing to speculate about. It may have been selected to convey more realism to a news story. It may have been selected to convey the idea that the editor is good at choosing interesting photographs and knows some good photographers. It may have been selected to generate thoughts of interest about an up coming movie...
The intent of last possible intendor is perhaps the most interesting. From the context I would be willing to speculate that the image is intended to generate ideas about meaning within images and the role that context has on the meaning within an image.
In this context it is possible that the intended ideas have nothing what-so-ever to do with the actual image being displayed. For example, the image could have been selected at random from a large pool of images (such as available on the web) and displayed here through the use an automated script, so that the content of the image is completely unconnected to the selection of the image. It could even be possible, if rather unlikely, that the image itself was taken by some automatic process, for example an unusually high quality security camera, dumped into the universe of images available on the web and then selected completely at random using a script. If we were to find out that this was the case, then the meaning we would then form about the image really comes from the process and has no connection at all to the content of the image.
I have problems with the whole idea of meaning within art, I am not sure that I agree that the purpose of art is to convey ideas from artist to viewer so much as having to do with the generation of ideas in the viewer. That is, I do not like to think of art in terms of what is the idea that the artist is intending to convey, but rather I prefer to think in terms of what ideas or thought processes the artist is generating within the viewer. (I prefer thought process to ideas, and I am thinking of thought processes as being something less tangible than ideas, although idea is often defined in terms of thought processes. In a sense I am thinking of ideas as thought processes that can be thought about and communicated, and assuming that there are thought processes that cannot be or are very difficult to directly think about and communicate). Since the context in which a piece of art appears has an effect on the thought processes that the piece generates, context is an integral part of art.