discussion questions

John Berger argues that photographs are in of themselves abstract as they extract, or arrest, a moment from time, stripping it away from what makes it meaningful—its historical and social contexts through which we make sense of photographs, or what Berger argues is their assigned past and future. This argument raises the question how meaning is made in photographs, and in what ways does the appearance of the image and the texts that accompany it help shape and influence how we read them. What kind of tools does Berger, Johnson, or Shore offer us to understand how images become both abstract and meaningful? What tensions are inherent to this kind of meaning making?

1. the audience is somewhat helpless because the camera limits our perception
2. the viewer, what they can absorb, is a big way in which meaning is made.
3. sequences both cut across different geopolitical contexts.

the choices of the photographer are meaningful

Berger also argues that photographs can’t lie nor tell the truth, even when it mechanically reproduces a the appearance of reality. How can we understand the concept of truth and lie in relationship to photographs, and what utility, if any, do these term hold in thinking about the meaning of photographs.

notes

asking to stop isolating the past and the present (the past is in the present)

walking clip

perspective closer to where people are, feels like you are in the act of walking

relationship of the photographer to the moment. she’s in the frame. shadow. eye contact. (opposed to other moments where she is removed from it)

cutting through scenes that unrelated (seemingly). but throughout the movie it reveals the context of each of these shots.

continuity of movement despite very different circumstances.