“When the artifact involves an image accompanied by text,
how is the text working to support or subvert the primacy of the image?”
In considering the various blog posts each of us busily posts,
I have been wrestling with quandaries similar to the one quoted above that Andrea
included in her recent post. The question is especially relevant considering
our blog posts from last Thursday, 10/4/2012 , where images featuring stage props were selected
for the class to consider. How were the ‘dances’ each of us performed in
relation to those images inspired/inflected/hindered by the text(s) that
accompanied each picture? What was brought into the conversation and what was
left out due to the words partnered with each photograph?
These questions can also be applied to the various photographs and their accompanying captions that appear in the recent articles we've read for class. In her article “Dances with Things,” Robin Bernstein deploys
a sense of shock and awe as she unravels for reader’s the history of the image
of a woman posing with a caricature at the Hotel Exposition - a tactic that was
noted in class as we discussed her rhetorical strategy. By withholding the sparse
bit of text associated with the image, the name “Helen Hernandez,” Bernstein
allows readers to dance with the photograph for the first half of her essay without this supposed identifying bit
of knowledge. This writing strategy points to a
keen awareness of the precarious relationship between image and text and their
ability to support or subvert each other. Despite this awareness, Bernstein
does not suitably attend to this relationship after calling attention to its existence. She
briefly notes making the assumption that the name on the back refers
to the woman in the image, but she does not fully explore the dance that people may do with photographs and
the various 'traditions' employed in labeling them and their contents. How might Bernstein's dance change if she considers the
numerous possibilities surrounding where the label may have arisen? What if the
image was labeled decades after the photograph was taken, the name merely an
assumption made by an unwitting future owner of the photo? My own family is notorious
for labeling photos half a century too late, making wild guesses at the identities
pictured in the family heirlooms. Was the name 'Helen Hernandez' added to the photo years later by someone simply guessing as to the identity of the woman in the photograph? Or what if the name on the back refers to the taker of
the photo and not to the person appearing in it? Bernstein addresses the dance that people must do when deciphering the elements within an image and begins another dance in confronting the text on the photo's reverse side. But this second 'turn around the floor' stops mid-song. The image is handled robustly but its text is given short shrift. Primacy seems to be given to whichever component has the greatest bulk - the image or the text. Perhaps we allow our eyes to do too much leading in this dance.
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