Although the writings of Minor White and his contemporaries seem rather dated these days, their musings come from a pre-postmodern era, with texts defining aspects of photography that were relatively new at the time but which are now taken for granted. Initially, it was what a photograph denoted that was important as much effort was put in to developing convincing reproductability while in the post war years although the photograph was still largely a black and white phenomena, colour was not yet generally of acceptable quality; nevertheless, as the powers of representation continued to improve, people were begining to consider the photograph is terms of connotation, the implications inherent within the image.
Minor White in writing about the “reading” of photographs saw it as only a means to an end, the end being the understanding of the photograph rather than the context which occupies many people today who see photographs not merely as art objects but also as historical documents. The following notes are made from a piece Minor White wrote for Aperture magazine (Volume 5, Number 2).
MW starts by defining his subject. The reading of a photograph means looking “long enough to identify the subject” which allows something to be communicated. The “reading” is not likely to be verbal rather related to one’s experience of the photograph in question. What follows is a a translation “from the realm of visual thinking into that of verbal expression” during which “slips are bound to occur“; MW compares the experience similar to that of translating poetry into another language and points out indirectly, that just as that is better done by poets, “reading” photographs is better done by photographers who know what making photograph entails.
“Reading” a photograph can help to take us beyond mere personal experience of it yet there are two other important reasons for doing so. The first concerns the fact that “more goes on in photographs than most of us guess“; beyond the information presented by an image, the subject and materials say something about the photographer and his inner message. The second concern is what makes MW write this article; this is the need to consider what a photograph says.
Further definition of what “reading” a photograph means is required, namely to “further experience a photograph without evaluating it“. Initially, criticism needs to be postponed to allow one to savour the work in question; MW actually talks about the “suppression” of evaluation, a remark that seems to reflect the period in which he was writing as the United States was at this time under the aftermath of the Second World War with repressive regimes like Mac Arthyism to say nothing of the general attitude towards “Blacks.” It is surely a mistake to pass judgement over any photograph since its’ meaning is likely to be complex and beyond out ordinary understanding.
It is the moment when one starts to become absorbed by a photograph that is important; at this point one is able to “concentrate on the significance of the picture” and hence is more able to communicate this “act of experiencing.”
One point raised by photographers, not so much nowadays but certainly in the past, is why talk about something that is being conveyed visually rather than verbally? If a photographer was able to verbalise his experience then he would write about it. The “reading” “can not help but impose one man’s experience of a picture on another man” (the use of the word “man” here is another indication of the modernist era in which this text was written!) yet the “reading” can help to prise out more information from a photograph that might otherwise be missed. While such “reading” might result in imposing ideas, it also gives the reader their own window to engage with their own conversation with “pictures.” MW’s use of the word picture here is interesting because it reveals that this approach relates not only to photographs but also paintings and seems to foreshadow the post-modern approach to artworks in which context assumes greater importance.
While many will have a gut response to a photograph, it is the job of the critic to penetrate further, beyond peronal feelings, to understand what the photograph is really about. “Semi-mechanical devices such as analyzing composition or technique” may help and some critics may have intellectual frameworks to discipline their approach; their needs to be “attention on the visuals of a picture without losing sight of the significance“.
Having argued his case, Minor White ends his article with a shortened definition of “reading” a photograph which is “to communicate, to the best of one’s ability, to another person verbally or with written words what one has experienced visually in a photograph or group of them.” While Minor White emphasises the need to “experience” a photograph, nowadays many people would not see that as important as quite possibly, as the photograph has become increasingly a useful object in society, it the connotations that outweigh what a photograph actually denotes.
There is something special in the way Minor White writes; his text is considered and concerned, he sees the photograph as an object with inherent value rather than merely a means to an end which is what he understands “reading” to be.
Progressing With Digital Photography 