A friend of mine, a very good comix artist and graphic designer, recently said something curious to me. Her husband was talking with her about a newly commissioned work, a painting on a skateboard. He told her, “Reinterpreting an image on a skateboard changes the message completely.” She was stunned.
“I didn’t realize,” she said, “that a functional item being put in a gallery could be a statement in itself. I just wanted it used.” I just smiled and said yes, context sets expectations for attention, and for interpretation.
Mind. Blown. As they say…
On one level, this is Dada territory. Duchamp’s “readymades” explored this idea a century ago. Photography, as usual, lags behind but by the time Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan put together their book and exhibition Evidence in 1977, even barely conscientious photographers had to take note. There’s a lot of postmodernist nonsense written about this quality of photography, usually deriving from trite notion that every human being is merely a product of their culture — because people need excuses — but at the very least it should be obvious to any contemporary viewer of photographs that where and how they see a photograph influences how (or whether) they attend to it.
However, mere attention isn’t enough. The quality and amount of attention is far more important. Doomscrolling adults and bored teens flipping through TikTok or Instagram or Bluesky seem the model of inattention, but the reality is that even in a gallery or archive the average attention to individual photographs does not reach three seconds. In that sense, context is irrelevant. Not seeing in a magazine or on a newsfeed is equivalent to not seeing in a gallery or in a cave. And bold, controversial opinions can be formed irrespective of actual analysis. Any ten minutes on social media or even TV “news” these days will show this.
I’ve chosen in my writing to concentrate on the other meaning of evidence. Namely, that which is obvious and provable. But context remains important. Important — but not always in the way one might think.
***
Here is a photograph unlike others I’ve chosen. It’s not printed on photo paper at all. Rather, it’s on newsprint. The creases in the picture are a dead giveaway. At some point this was in a newspaper. This doesn’t change the content of the photo much — except that this print will have the marks of halftone printing — but it certainly changes the context. This is not a photograph intended for delectation by a gallery of art snobs. This is meant specifically for the laity.
Assuming it has not been cropped, it has roughly a 4×5 ratio, suggesting that it was shot with a large format camera. Hardly a typical tool these days. Moreover, the contrast range is fairly low. There isn’t a real shadow in the picture. Partly that’s because it’s an old photograph. But also partly this is because it is on newsprint. Given the ink limit of newsprint, this is far from a rich reproduction. There is also damage from the aging of the newsprint. The print also features a certain vignetting in the corners, a feature of old lenses, and a mostly blown-out sky. This might be closer to the “original”:
It’s possible to do my usual analysis on this. That would lead me to surmise this was a large format photo taken from a high vantage point of a small town on a riverfront, probably somewhere around 1871, printed on paper from a wet plate negative, by a professional surveyor, then reprinted in a newspaper in 1971. And indeed the text in the newspaper mostly accords with me.
The extra details added in the paper are things about which I know nothing, as I’m not from Brunswick. But this photograph was printed in a newspaper to be read by any Brunswicker who could read. The editors expected that readers would understand these references, this context. Denizens would know this was a photograph of Brunswick. They would know the Grand and the Missouri rivers, and likely that their current Methodist church (probably still standing) and old city hall were in this area. Likely they would know the name of R.W. Benecke and might even know him personally.
These are contextual details I do not know. That does not mean I could not know them. I could go to Brunswick, look through archives, become a scholar of the area, and so on. My original interpretation of the photograph then would change as I knew more details. This does not make my original interpretation wrong, merely incomplete.
Curiously though, the Brunswicker interpretation of this photograph actually is wrong. They figured this out a year later when they ran the picture again.
The print here is darker and the creases are different but it’s the same photograph. The text however is different.
Apparently J.J. McKinny found a second picture that made him look closer at the first. He noticed that there were no railroad tracks. Therefore the photograph could not have been made after 1867 when the tracks were completed. This makes the earlier newspaper interpretation incorrect, while mine remains incomplete but still correct.
Why? Because I said probably. The editorial writer at the paper stated that the photo was from 1872. It is not. Mr. McKinny’s observation proves this. What the editor probably meant but likely felt was too long-winded to say is “This photograph was the recent cover of The Cooperative Observer published by the US Department of Commerce that covers the period from 1872 to 1903.” That much is factual. But it is an assumption to think the photograph actually matches that time period.
As I’m not a Brunswicker, I am more likely to be uncertain and less likely to assume. I concentrate on what is absolutely provable — large format ratio, monochrome, print size, materials, etc. Anything conjectural I precede with “probably” or “possibly.” Perhaps that trait is the former analytical chemist in me speaking, but I really hate to sound certain when I’m not. Talking about art doesn’t change my inclination or my uncertainty. Art deserves the same level of rigor about what is and is not certain, and the same level of grace about the impossibility to know completely.
The contextual details known by Mr. J.J. McKinny make his interpretation more complete than mine because he can establish more facts, where I can only surmise. That doesn’t make my interpretation invalid. It just means that it’s not the final word. Facts are facts because they can be disproven. Interpretations can only be more or less complete, more or less likely, more or less germane, more or less interesting. Context doesn’t change fact. It provides different facts and different connections for facts. The object being discussed (as with this photograph) remains exactly what it is.
