Discussion - Is Context Important?

[pgriz]

Warning - another long post...

Only if you want to understand.

Context provides the critical information needed to decipher a communication. Statements, writings, actions, and other expressions lose meaning when they are taken out of context.

Sometimes, context is not important. A statement of "I Love You" on a valentine's card that is given to classmates in grade school, has much less need for explanation, than the same phrase uttered by a person who was never able to say it before, to someone they will never see again. A snapshot, taken out of boredom of the litter on a desk, does not need much context, compared to a photo taken of the same desk to be used in a murder evidence case. But without knowing the context, it is difficult to know if the image is meaningful or banal.

Many of our discussions of photography touch upon the photographic elements, but rarely provide much context by which we can determine what we are looking at. So we often have to ask what the objective of the photographer was in making the image, because we cannot determine it from the clues in the image.

But do/should we care about the context? If the image is decorative, then perhaps context is less needed, as the image is essentially self-contained. But if the image is of an event, or a place, or of a group, then context becomes important to allow us to understand what it is we are seeing. It is possible to have a false context, which propaganda uses to create an illusion that does not in realy exist.

Amolitor recently posted a number of images that are famous and taken by historically-renown photographers. He challenged us to critique them. Without the context of how the images were taken, when, and why, it was almost impossible to give a meaningful critique. And yet, without that context, we are seeing the image only as decoration. We may read into it things that never occured to the original photographer, but we are then substituting our context for that of the photographer.

What about the deliberately ambiguous image? This example practically invites us to insert our own context to decipher the image, and in adding our bits, we create new meaning. But that approach relies partly on the image-maker knowing the various contextes that exist concurrently, and therefore uses that knowledge to create the ambiguity.

Another context that is very familiar to all of us the the setting within which snapshots are made – a family event, a shared experience, a famous location. With the context in place, the mommy/daddy goggles areusually fully on. Without the context, all we see is some person, in an unknown setting, doing something. We know this when looking at photos of relatives that we don't know – not very interesting. But if we are told that the image is of Great-great-uncle George and the lady besides him was his mistress who made him abandon the family and move to colonial Cuba where he then made a fortune in sugar plantations, then the image becomes much more interesting.

In my mind, without context, we have incomplete communication. With the right context we can see and understand. So if it isn't decoration, tell us the context. Tell us why we should care.

 

[Derrel]

In what context are you asking if context is important?

Sorry....could...not...resist. Your post is long and boring and filled with important stuff. Ooops...did I say boring? I meant "deep". Yeah....context...with the proper caption, even a boring photograph can be made to seem very exciting and interesting. When we see photos that are presented with ZERO context, our interpretation of the photos is haphazard, random,unscripted, free-form, unprejudiced, and so on...

When we see a photograph that comes to us with "an introduction", or "a letter of recommendation from a trusted associate", or even a photo credit line or copyright notice with the photographer's identifying marks, I am convinced that our perception of said photograph is influenced; sometimes only a little, but many times, influenced to a very significant degree.

A cheezy, gaudy MWAC copyright notice slapped on, large, atop of an image, carries/conveys a VERY different message than say, an image run with the name of some shooter, and "Getty Images" tagged onto it. Art house photos that are prefaced with a lengthy artist's statement, and then individual captions, predispose the viewers who see them.

"Context. It's what's for dinner." No, wait, that's supposed to be, "Beef. It's what's for dinner." Sorry...am I just a clown....or am I nursing a killer hangover? What is the context in which this is being written?

 

[pgriz]

I was trying to figure out how much we need to know about an image to be able to evaluate it. Is eye candy sufficient? Does the image fail if it doesn't evoke emotion? Context seems to supply meaning. Could be wrong.

"Long and boring?" Yeah - could be. Going to be the "SNOOZINATOR!"

 

[cgipson1]

Yes.. to all the above!

 

[Derrel]

Context is everything. Well, almost everything! That's why I said your post was "boring", and then changed it to "deep". I was using a mock insult to get sleepy TPF readers' heart rates up, so they'd take some INTEREST in what I was writing...

Context is so powerful that we can take a photograph made of an emotionally neutral scene, and write a caption for it, and that caption can make people feel angry, or sad, excited, or repulsed. Images seen in a "gallery" or "museum" must be better than those displayed "on the web", right???

 

[unpopular]

I'm sure I have a long boring post of my own on this topic. I'll come back later.

 

[Solarflare]

I had a fun discussion recently with some kind of, well, logic reduced individual that claimed that in one of my postings, my sentence 3 was contradicting sentece 1 because he didnt take into consideration that sentence 3 was spoken in context of sentence 1 and I didnt explicitly wanted to repeat the information already given in sentence 1.

So yeah, context is important. Otherwise we would have to speak with extreme redundancy.

 

[amolitor]

I believe that a good image will stand on its own. A good image is one which evokes something in many of its viewers -- not everyone will be affected, not everyone will like it, but many people will be affected.

Almost any photograph will evoke something in SOME people. Snapshots evoke memories in the people who were there, regardless of quality. The point of a "good" image is that it's closer to universal (although, as I suggest, no image is truly universal).

All that said, when we look at a photograph, we bring a ton of baggage. Every photograph we've ever seen. Our life, our experience. Things we know about photography. Everything we have inside us will affect, however slightly, how we react to an image.

Context is just another source of stuff we can bring to the image. The name of the photographer. The Artists's Statement. The caption or title of the photograph. The other photographs on the walls nearby. All these things get added to the baggage we're bringing when we look at a photograph, and they too will affect how we react.

The point of a "good" photograph, though, is that it doesn't need that stuff. It approaches universality, "most" people feel something when they look at it.

Whether that reaction is based on "real" things or not seems hardly to matter, to me. What does it matter if I don't recognize Winston Churchill, and instead imagine a narrative of a portly bookseller, furious with a shoplifter? I am reacting, the image moves and affects me. Certainly differently than if I knew it was the former PM of Great Britain, but it affects me, and that's good.

Context changes things, but I don't think it makes them "better" or "worse", only different.

[ There is one case I have run across where it might matter -- some images are pretty much nothing by themselves, but in a collection of related images the whole becomes something greater than the parts, it tells a collective story. In this case the "context" is just the other photographs in the collection, though. ]

EDIT: One more thing. If a photograph needs a bunch of text or explanation to be "good" well, that's ok, but you're doing multimedia art at this point, blending photography and text into a whole. It is not, to my mind, "photography"

 

[cgipson1]

I had a fun discussion recently with some kind of, well, logic reduced individual that claimed that in one of my postings, my sentence 3 was contradicting sentece 1 because he didnt take into consideration that sentence 3 was spoken in context of sentence 1 and I didnt explicitly wanted to repeat the information already given in sentence 1.

So yeah, context is important. Otherwise we would have to speak with extreme redundancy.

Coherency helps also!

 

[Derrel]

The statement, "a good image will stand on its own," is one of the most often-repeated half-truths in photography. And I say that NOT to be controversial, and NOT out of malice, but simply because it is a HALF-truth. The statement is almost a cliche, and it ignores a HUGE aspect of human behavior, and fails to address the entire issue of HOW "images" are actually presented, and how they are actually consumed.

 

[unpopular]

Austin Kleon illustrates the following James Kochalka quote very clearly, that art is not about communication, but rather understanding:

(CC, 2007 Austin Kleon - from James Kochalka, "The Horrible Truth about Comics" | Flickr - Photo Sharing!)

“What is art not? Well, as I’ve described it, Art is not about communication. Art is not a way of conveying information. It’s a way of understanding information. That is, creating a work of art is a means we have of making sense of the world, focusing to make it clearer, not a way of communicating some understanding of the world that we already hold. If you already hold a clear understanding of whatever then there’s no reason to create the work of art. So you don’t. In fact, you can’t. If you are trying to demonstrate some fact pictorially this is called illustration. Illustration is superficial, no matter how skilled, because it is secondary. The idea comes first and the illustration explicates it.”

James Kochalka "The Horrible Truth about Comics" The Cute Manifesto, 2005

If art is not about communication, but rather understanding, then I am not sure that art must stand on it's own in order to be successful. Certainly throughout art history - in particular performance art - vagueness has been used to encourage and incorporate audience interpretation (Beckett's Waiting for Godit, Lynch's Lost Highway and Inland Empire). In such works, little context is provided and the interpretation will vary depending upon the viewer's own experiences.

In such cases, the audience's own context as well as the artist's hold equal importance. This seems in line intentional fallacy, the idea that a work doesn't need to reflect the artists intentions in order to have value. I agree with this idea a great deal, what the artist had in mind doesn't really play much a role in how I interpret a piece of art work, but on the other hand how I value a piece of work doesn't really affect how the artist interprets it either. Why should the artist be confined to the experiences of the audience, why should the audience be confined to the experiences of the artist?

(Sorry if I'm being vague. I have a migraine coming)

 

[unpopular]

The statement, "a good image will stand on its own," is one of the most often-repeated half-truths in photography. And I say that NOT to be controversial, and NOT out of malice, but simply because it is a HALF-truth. The statement is almost a cliche, and it ignores a HUGE aspect of human behavior, and fails to address the entire issue of HOW "images" are actually presented, and how they are actually consumed.

I think one of the biggest problems with this statement, "a good image will stand on it's own" is that you risk resorting to aesthetic tricks rather than creating anything of significance, and this is illustrated throughout modernism. In an attempt to create something which is universally appealing, you end up watering down content to the point that it is merely an illusion of something worthwhile.

Nice to look at and experience, but once it's out of view it's virtually forgotten.

 

[amolitor]

The statement, "a good image will stand on its own," is one of the most often-repeated half-truths in photography. And I say that NOT to be controversial, and NOT out of malice, but simply because it is a HALF-truth. The statement is almost a cliche, and it ignores a HUGE aspect of human behavior, and fails to address the entire issue of HOW "images" are actually presented, and how they are actually consumed.

That's a perfectly fair statement.

Perhaps I should say that a good image "should be capable of standing on its own" with some caveats about how the experience will be different, and less complete than if (fill in whatever's necessary).

This is certainly subject to disagreement, but my personal opinion is that an image which cannot evoke and be powerful all by itself, stripped of the photographer's name, the title, and everything else, then it is -- probably -- not a "good" image. And no, I do not think I have ever made one. They have been made, however.

 

[unpopular]

A photograph should be an *object* on it's own, something that is experienced rather than merely viewed. Art should engage and incorporate the audience in a participatory way.

By the sound of it, it seems that this is more what you meant.

 

[amolitor]

I think I feel like it's worth parsing this a little further, having re-read the OP.

There's levels or degrees of context. It would be absurd to suppose that an alien being, with no exposure to human culture whatsoever, would "get" the greatest of our photographs, or indeed any of our art. So, there is at least the shared context that every human shares with every other human required. Beyond that there's degrees of literacy, which might reasonably be required to "get" a lot of art -- you have to have experienced some art somewhere, maybe read some books. Maybe you really need to be steeped in western european culture and its offshoots to get some thing. A "Christ Figure" to select the favorite symbol of all high school english teachers, is likely to be almost meaningless to some people walking this earth.

When I say that a good image should be capable of emotional power all by itself, I am probably, implicitly, assuming that it is being viewed by someone familiar with western european culture and its offshoots, someone who is socio-economically lower middle class or wealthier. The viewer, in broad strokes, I assume to be rather like me. What should NOT be necessary is image-specific context, like the name of the photographer, the date on which it was taken, details about the subject matter, and so forth.

Where one draws the line in "degrees of context" is pretty arbitrary. Allow me, if you will, to further re-write my notion of a good image:

"A good image should be capable of emotional, evocative, power in many of those people who view it if they have access to some rough approximation of the surrounding cultural milieu."

That's a hell of a mouthful, innit? This is a subject that's interesting to me, and I want to be precise. Sorry about that.