Can we say absolutely anything we like about photography?

Abstract

‘When we find a photograph meaningful’, wrote John Berger, ‘we are lending it a past and a future’.1 In the implicit act of collaboration between viewer and photographer thus envisaged, something essential has occurred. The photographer, who created the image and who perhaps alone knew the past of the image, has quietly vanished. This has become one of the commonplaces of photographic literature: ‘The ideal photographic document would appear to be without author or art.’2 Certain dimensions of the meaning of the image, too, have evaporated. This is an experience which is familiar from everyday life. Family photo-albums, for example, remain the same as objects, but there is a change in meaning when those who possess knowledge of the subjects pass from the scene. Junk shops are littered with photographs which were once precious and meaningful to someone, but which for ourselves retain only a trace of these associations. A curious uniform, perhaps, or some other accidental feature, a building or interesting location, might re-endow the image with a mild interest for others. But mostly the first layer, or half-life, of the meaning of the photographic image fades until the object is only of aesthetic interest, until it has been absorbed into the discourse of art. And then we call it ‘vernacular photography’.