Photographs do not always provide
an accurate depiction of reality. With today’s access to Photoshop, filters,
distorting lenses, and countless other devices whose sole purpose it is to
mutate images, it sometimes becomes difficult to separate what is real from
what is fake, accentuated, simply impossible. However, it does not even take
Photoshop (or any digitally enhancing software for that matter) to present a
photograph in a way that gives an audience an exaggerated, or simply false
impression of one’s reality. This action, of presenting a photograph without
providing context crucial to the understanding of what the photograph actually represents, is framing. Framing
does not have to be intentionally deceiving: it is possible to present a
photograph with one intention only to notice that people perceive it much
differently.
Michael
Schwalbe, a professor at North Carolina State University begins his article Framing the Self with the sentence, “The
ambiguity of photographs compels us to enstory them” (Schwalbe 1). The verb
“enstory” implies that a photograph serves as a snapshot into the story of
one’s life, and viewers’ responsibility is to assume the context: what exactly
lead up to the photograph in question and what is really going on in the photograph. Today, there is a popular genre
of photography that involves photographing siblings over time. I will do
something slightly different by going through photographs of my sisters and me
as well as photographs of each of us individually and perform an act of
enstorying on my own using Michael Schwalbe’s Framing the Self, Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, and Susan Sontag’s On Photography: In Plato’s Cave. I will present how the framing of
photographs of siblings together and on their own can provide what might be
misleading information about each individual person and their relationships.
From a
viewer’s perspective, this photograph depicts three likely related young girls.
The girl in the center and the girl on the right seem to have a closer
relationship, judging by the fact that their faces are placed much closer
together than the girl on the left’s is with the girl in the center. These
observations, along with the fact that the girl on the left has straight hair
while the other two have curly hair implies some stronger connection between
the girl in the center and the girl on the right. It is difficult to tell when
or where this photograph occurred, because two of the subjects are wearing
clothing designed for warm weather and the third is wearing clothing designed
for cold weather. The impression I just described is a perfect example of framing: enstorying a photograph, which can easily leave a viewer with an inaccurate impression
of what the photograph depicts. In reality, the girl on the left (Jane) and the
girl on the right (Ali) are twins, and I, their younger sister, am in the
middle. Our placement in this photograph has nothing to do with how close we
are with one another, but rather my mother decided that she wanted me to be in
the middle because I am the youngest sibling. This photograph was taking during the
summer. The reason I am wearing more layers than my sisters is that I insisted on wearing my favorite article of clothing (the winter
vest) regardless of the warm weather. Why did my mother capture this photograph
in the first place? According to Susan Sontag, “Cameras go with family life…Not
to take pictures of one’s children, particularly when they are small, is a sign
of parental indifference, just as not turning up for one’s graduation picture
is a gesture of adolescent rebellion” (Sontag 5). My mother captured this
photograph because capturing photographs of one’s children is an unspoken
requirement of parenthood. It is a part of our culture, a part of tradition, and a trend that
has persisted and will continue to persist over time.
From a viewer’s perspective, it
appears that the subject of this photograph is either trying to hop over a
fence into a restricted area of a park or returning to the walking path after
being in the restricted area. In either case, it appears that the subject has
broken the law by entering a restricted area. She is smiling, showing that she
is satisfied with her decision to break the law. Viewers of this photograph may
negatively judge the subject for her seemingly illegal actions. In reality, I
captured this photograph of my sister, Ali, two months ago in Central Park.
Although it appears that she is trying to hop over the fence, she did not
actually lift her leg any higher than it is in this photograph. She was not
trying to break the law, but rather she was making a joke. She is a very serious and
hardworking person, and for anyone who knows her, it is amusing to imagine her
doing something rebellious like entering restricted property. This photograph
demonstrates just how huge of an impact framing can have one’s interpretation
of a photograph. Without context, without knowing that this scene is not how it
appears and that the subject has no real desire to perform the suggested act,
one forms a severely inaccurate impression of what the photograph conveys. Even
more, without knowing her personality and sense of humor, this photograph can
lead to an incredibly inaccurate impression of who Ali is as a person. In Camera Lucida, Barthes describes, “In
front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want
others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he
makes use of to exhibit his art” (Barthes 13). In this photograph, the first
three interpretations are the same: Ali and I both believe that she is funny,
and that her pose only reinforces this opinion. However, the last
interpretation, the interpretation that I, the photographer, make use of, is intentionally
ambiguous. I did not want to explicitly state that her pose is a joke because I
felt that this information would take away from the humor of photograph. By leaving this
information out, I framed her for any audience who does not know her personally.
In Photograph 3, this subject is
dressed in an eccentric, provocative way. Although there is no one “normal” way
to dress, her outfit does not look like something one typically sees someone
wear walking down the street. A viewer would assume that she is the kind of
person who tries to present herself in a way that deviates from what society
considers “normal.” In reality, this is my other sister, Jane, and she is an
actor. As an actor, she assumes the roles of a broad range of characters with which
she may have absolutely nothing in common. In Photograph 3, she is dressed as
Mimi from the play Rent. Jane and
Mimi have little in common in terms of personalities and fashion sense. Yet
what framing has done is removed this context, the fact that she is in costume
and in character, and not acting as Jane would. I feel similarly about
Photographs 3 and 4 as Barthes does when looking through old photographs of his
mother. He says, “In these photographs of my mother there was always a
place set apart, reserved and preserved: the brightness of her eyes…this light
led me toward an essential identity, the genius of the beloved face” (Barthes
66). When viewing these photographs of my sister, her clothing and make-up are
not what attract my attention, but rather the passion behind her eyes and
intensity in her face. Behind whatever character she is portraying, what I see
is that her facial expression is completely engaged in her acting. From a young
age, acting has been her primary focus and passion, and seeing a photograph
like this of her allows me to see how she looks when she is devoting herself to
the thing that makes her the happiest.
From a
viewer’s perspective, this subject of this photograph appears to be unhappy,
judging by the fact that she is flipping the camera off. She seems frustrated that
someone is taking her photograph. She appears to be in some sort of museum or
art gallery, but judging by the unhappy look on her face and the fact that she
is flipping the camera off, this must not be her choice. In reality, this is a
photograph of me at MoMa. I was very happy to be there, and my middle finger is
up in response to the photographs behind me. Upon closer inspection, one can
see that these photographs are of the photographer’s middle finger in front of
the Eiffel towel and other monuments. By posing this way for the camera, I
intended to do what the photographer of the works behind me had done: flip monuments
off. This photograph of me captured a significant event in my life. The photographs behind
me moved me. The photographer’s audacity to travel to world monuments, only to
flip them off, made me reconsider why
we travel to see these monuments, and why we place such a great importance on
capturing them through photography. In her piece On Photography: In Plato’s Cave, Susan Sontag talks about how
significant an impact seeing photographs of Bergen-Belsen and Dachau had on
her. Although the content of those photographs is much different than the
content of the ones that gave me an awakening, I, like Sontag, feel that “it
seems plausible to me to divide my life into two parts, before I saw those
photographs and after, though it was several years before I understood fully
what they were about” (Sontag 15). Like Sontag, a series of photographs gave me
an awakening, but unlike Sontag, the exact moment when I viewed these
photographs exists as a photograph. All of these details, the reasoning behind
my pose and the connection I feel to this moment can only be understood when I
explain the context of the capture of this photograph. Framing this photograph without providing any of this information prevents any viewer from understanding what is really going on.
Photographs 6 and 7 are seemingly typical photographs of three siblings reunited after
months apart at separate universities. In Photograph 6, my sisters and I all
appear to be happy. We are standing close to one each other, and upon close inspection,
one can see that we each have one arm visible and the other wrapped around each
other. This photograph features warm colors, which suggest a warm, intimate
relationship between the photographic subjects. Each of these factors adds to
the impression that we are happy, close in proximity as well as emotionally,
and comfortable at the time of the photograph’s capture. When a viewer
“enstories” this photograph, she likely imagines a cheerful, relaxed reunion
between siblings, and it is fair to assume that the photographer captured this
photograph in the middle of some cheerful bonding activity. In reality, my
mother took this photograph less than an hour after my sisters and I all
arrived home for Thanksgiving break. Instead of having a lot of time to
reconnect, we each spent most of this break running around, attempting to see
high school friends and cram the days with errands. We spent little of this
time relaxing or hanging out. Although viewers would enstory this image with
the three subjects spending a lot of happy, carefree time together, the reality
is that life prevented us from actually doing so. Susan Sontag identifies
exactly what is going on in On
Photography: In Plato’s Cave: “Though an event has come to mean, precisely,
something worth photographing, it is still ideology that determines what
constitutes an event…the contribution of photography always follows the naming
of the event (Sontag 14). Thanksgiving is a holiday where spending time
with family is expected. Along with the event of Thanksgiving dinner comes the
expectation that someone will take happy family reunion photographs. These
photographs become a way in which family members experience the event. What
matters more than how this event actually turned out is what the photographs
taken at the event suggest happened. My sisters and I may have felt stressed out
when my mother captured this photograph of us, but as long as the photograph
suggests that we are comfortable and relaxed, we have fulfilled
the expectation of taking a photograph that depicts how we should feel.
In today’s society, it is inevitable that
people are constantly taking photographs. As Susan Sontag says, “photography
has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing” (Sontag
5). Since photographs only capture one instant in time, there is so much
context and so many moments that are left out when trying to capture the
essence of a person or describe a relationship. We use photography as a way to
capture a moment in time and to preserve history, but in doing so, we are left
with a fragmented, distorted, and often inaccurate snapshot of reality. I love
my sisters, and we do and always have had an incredibly strong relationship, but no photograph can fully express who we are as individuals or who
we are together. With the prevalence of social media and constant access to cameras, it is inevitable that photography’s role in capturing events and eventually
replacing experiences will only grow stronger. This growing need for
photography will only exacerbate the issue of framing. As I have noted in the
photographs of my sisters and me, framing can allow viewers to form a completely
inaccurate impression of reality. As we carry on with our lives, constantly
capturing and viewing photographs, it is important that we note just how powerful
framing really is, and how little a brief glance at a photograph tells us about
reality.
Works
Cited
Barthes, Roland. Camera
Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1980. Print.
Schwalbe, Michael. "Framing The Self." Symbolic
Interaction 32.3 (2009): 177-183. Print.
Sontag, Susan. On
Photography: In Plato’s Cave New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
Print.
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