Interpreting Visual Ethnography by Erkan Ali

Author:Erkan Ali [Ali, Erkan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367369521
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

Notes

1The photograph is therefore a “mirror with memory”, as Kracauer suggested (see Introduction). But words can make the mirror reflect what we want it to reflect and can make those memories visible to others.

2For more details see my discussion of “studium” and “punctum” in the Introduction. I will return to these concepts again later.

3It has not been possible to reproduce any photographs in this chapter.

4Kuhn explains that when she was very young her father had a “photography business” and that her mother helped him to run it (1995: 48).

5This point links to the theme of territoriality, which I have identified as a particular consequence of the application of text in some instances of lamination. These kinds of effects continue later as Kuhn interprets the application and removal of text equally as gestures of ownership.

6Of course, in the case of the material photograph, reproducibility is dependent upon the availability of the negative.

7A modern equivalent of such a device is the Etch-a-Sketch.

8A “memory” can be recorded in a number of ways. As we have seen, such records can take a visual form, whether textual or imagistic. But a memory may also take an audio form. An excellent example of this is evident in Beckett’s absurdist (1958) play Krapp’s Last Tape. In this dark comedy, the sixty-nine-year-old protagonist (Krapp), a partially-sighted, partially-deaf and lonely figure, reflects on the events of his life, which have been recorded on tapes and stored in the drawers of his bureau for thirty years. The messages which exist on Krapp’s tapes are subject to continual change as his interpretations of his recollections also change. With each new interpretation, we have a situation whereby the tapes contain recorded and re-recorded messages which become mixed and therefore confused.

9See Burt (2005) in reference to Baudelaire and opium.

10The technical term for this is “ekphrasis”, the use of vivid writing in an effort to convey and describe a visual medium such as a painting or a photograph (see Mitchell, 2005: 262).

11For a reverential parody of Camera Lucida see Mavor, 2007; for a rather more sarcastic take on it see Elkins, 2011.

12Kuhn’s study draws on psychoanalysis. Indeed, given Kuhn’s obvious resentment of her mother’s interference with the photographs and the connection she suggests they signify between herself and her father, we might point out that Kuhn’s reflections are more apt for psychoanalysis than Barthes’ are. Specifically, Kuhn’s book could be taken as evidence of what Freud referred to as “Elektra complex” (Samuels, 1985: 214). Elektra complex describes the competition between the young female child and her mother for possession of the father; it is therefore the female equivalent of the Oedipus complex in boys. Perhaps one reason for the psychoanalytic readings of Barthes’ reflections on the Winter Garden photograph has to do with its non-disclosure, causing a temptation to suggest a deeper significance. Kuhn, by contrast, is perhaps seen as up-front and honest about her photographs because she shows them to us. But, of course, Barthes explains his decision not to include the Winter

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