Film Art vs. Practices of Looking

So. Here is a photo. How would David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson interpret this verses Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright? Let's take a look.

Sturken and Cartwright believe that meaning is comprised of three components, 1) The codes associated with and inseparable from the image, 2) the viewer's own interpretation made up of all their past experiences and opinions, and 3) the context of the location and setting the art is observed in.

For the following photo, the structure is on the surface quite simple; a place middle aged woman is holding a white baby on a street corner. It is a photograph taken in black and white with a shallow focus on the woman and baby. However the symbols there attached give us a little more to chew on. Obviously race becomes an issue; the woman seems to be taking care of the child, but her stationary position suggests that perhaps the child's mother is inside shopping while the African American servant waits with the child. Looking deeper we can see that she has an expression of mild discontent combined with a certain acceptance that this is how things are. We could even look deeper and notice that the baby has almost an identical expression, but perhaps with the acceptance replaced with confusion. This could say that the child is being ushered into the world the nanny has come to sadly accept.

These themes of race are supported in the context as well; if honoluluacademy.org is to be trusted, then this photo was released in a controversial album in 1958 when the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. At the time it was taken as a scathing criticism of the glorified image of American in that decade. In that light the simple composition of the photograph mocks this time period in addition to the content by differentiating itself from the busy merriment of artists like Norman Rockwell.

S&C also put a huge emphasis on artwork which challenges our assumptions, citing such examples as the Fred Wilson Guarded View exhibit of 1991 where he dressed mannequins in the clothing of art museum security guards. In that light (especially when seen by me, in this modern day) the photo could be seen to challenge the assumptions I made based around what I know about the period in American history which to me has, essentially, become mythology. Seen nowadays it would not be out of the question to imagine that the woman had adopted the child and was simply waiting for the cross signal to change. Even my initial assumption that the child was male could be challenged; did I see it as a boy simply because, due to their skin colors? These are questions S&C would want me to ask, not only because of the emphasis they put on assumption-challenging artwork (a good seven pages), but because they believe that the meaning is inextricably bound to the viewer, and thus changes over time.

Thompson and Bordwell's interpretation would doubtless contain many of the same elements as S&C's did. However rather than focusing on the questions the viewer asks themselves when observing art, T&B looks at the process of observing art and the structure art can be explained by. In addition, T&B broke down meaning into slightly different categorizes.

T&B would break down the photo like this:
1) Referential meaning: the bare bones description of content.
An African American woman stands on a street corner holding a white baby in a black and white photograph.
2) Explicit Meaning: what the art comes out and states its purpose is.
This is trickier with a photograph where nothing is ever 'stated'. One could argue that the nature of race is prevalent and coded enough that it could qualify as a statement. Other places to look would be an accompanying artist's statement or the title of the photo.
3) Implicit Meaning: meaning which is not implied but which must be determined by the veiwer.
Everything I wrote above could qualify, from the racial perspective to the chalenging of racial assumptions.
4) The Symptomatic Meaning: This is the cultural context in which the piece was presented.
This would relate to the time it was published, the book it was published in, who it published it, etc. as described above.

T&B would also examine the way we look at the photo to decide what meaning it could contain; our eyes naturally jump to the part of the photo which is in focus, the woman, and then skirt to the periphery to see if the rest of the photo is consistent to what we observed about its core. They argue that the periphery must be consistent with the bulk in order for a good opinion to be formed; how does the blury street match up with our ideas about race? Perhaps it is the idealized past of America drifting into memory. Perhaps it is the road the baby is destined to walk down, leading away from the black woman who is caring for him into the bury, sterile, inhospitable whiteness. Perhaps it is the blurry gray in which they are both encompassed as human beings. In any case, T&B believe that it must be examined if a valuable opinion is to be formulated.