Ambiguities, Approximations, Abstractions

Abstract

In his reflections on photographs of drops of water and World Trade Center dust, James Elkins dismisses ‘pictures with labels and subjects, places and dates, where everything is explained and classified and useful’ as ‘distractions’ from what photography is.¹ At the same time, he acknowledges that ‘[s]ome of the world’s most serious images — the ones that provide evidence, bear testimony, indict and vindicate — are helpless without their supporting explanations’.² I am interested in this alleged helplessness. What is ‘helpless’ supposed to mean? Why are some images ‘helpless’ without explanations, while others are not? Do ‘serious’ images require explanations while others can stand on their own? Many of the world’s most trivial images, for example, those collected in traditional family albums or their digital equivalents, are incomprehensible to people other than those depicted, because they do not easily reveal the peculiarities of the social relations among the people depicted.³ Jae Emerling accordingly argues that not only the most serious images but all images ‘require exegesis, interpretation, discourse, that is, language as a necessary supplement of the visual’.⁴ But, again, what is exactly meant by ‘supplement’? A standard dictionary entry defines it as ‘[s]omething added to supply a deficiency; an auxiliary means, an aid#x2019;, a ‘part added to complete a literary work or any written account or document#x2019;, the ‘action of supplying what is wanting; the making good of a deficiency or shortcoming’.⁵