# The Meaning of 'meaning'



## The_Traveler (Apr 15, 2013)

With the help of pgriz, Derrel and Amolitor (actually they untangled most of the prose and stamped on some of the uglier stuff) I have made a blog post titled as above at my own site.

Link 
*http://lewlortonphoto.com/blog/2013/4/the-meaning-of-meaning*

any feedback or comment is welcomed.

L


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## The_Traveler (Apr 15, 2013)

I wonder what the most number of views I can get without a comment - even a snide one?


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## Tiller (Apr 15, 2013)

Very interesting. I'll be looking forward to seeing your post on whether you can have meaning without emotion. One question I would have would be, why would you want to?


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## kokonut (Apr 17, 2013)

That is a really philosophic blog post. Thank you for sharing your thoughts there. For me, as you mention, meaning is related to emotion and I don't know if meaning can exist without emotion!


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## KenC (Apr 17, 2013)

Interesting stuff, and I agree for the most part.  I will differ on one detail, though, namely the statement that

 "First the content within the frame, everything,must be coherent with the intended meaning because the viewer  sees it all, assumes it must be there because the photographer left it  there and the viewer attempts to make a story."

In many situations, especially the "street" or documentary photography you've used as examples, there are elements in the frame, or not in the frame, that are where they are because that was the situation that presented itself at the time.  For example, is the viewer to look for meaning in the rifle and the shoes being cut off in the Capa image, or in certain people or buildings that are present in the background in the Viet Nam image?  Some of this is an accident of "the moment" and does not really affect the meaning or power of the image.  This applies also to some of the stuff I do, pictures that are "semi-abstract" images extracted from stuff on walls, etc., where one works with what is there.  To some extent the images can be cleaned up, e.g., by removing some distracting specks, etc., but there is a limit to what one can do, and there will be some elements that don't mean anything that end up in the frame.  Of course if there are too many or if they are too distracting, this can result in the image just not working as intended, but I don't think we should expect everything in the frame to have a meaning.


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## The_Traveler (Apr 17, 2013)

Thanks for reading, thinking and responding.
If you have the time, please put this as a comment on the blog to see if it incited other comments.

My response is:

If there is something in the frame that isn't integral or supportive of the meaning then it's prominence should be suppressed as much as possible - cropping, darkening, blurring, lowering of contrast.
All those are hints to the viewer's unconscious parser that the 'something' isn't of much importance.


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## pgriz (Apr 17, 2013)

Meaning, as intended by the photographer, may not translate to meaning as understood by a viewer.  One can think of the range of reactions as being a typical bell curve (an assumption right there), with the photographer's intended meaning being somewhere in there.  If the mid-point of the curve coincides with the photographer's intent, then it is probably a successful image.  The cultural context plays a big role in what we "see" (some aspects of cultural blindness), and how we interpret that to extract meaning (cultural conditioning, patterns of thought).  When we try to construct an image with meaning, we almost by definition have a target audience in mind, who would "read" the image in a more-or-less predictable way.  The reaction becomes much more random outside of that target audience.  I tend to make images for myself, and put them out to discover whether my "vision" is mainstream, or somewhat of an outlier.  Neither is better than the other, but it is interesting to see how one's ideas get transmogrified by others.


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## PixelRabbit (Apr 17, 2013)

Posting so I don't forget to read this later.


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## KenC (Apr 17, 2013)

The_Traveler said:


> Thanks for reading, thinking and responding.
> If you have the time, please put this as a comment on the blog to see if it incited other comments.



I'll see if I can figure out how to do that



The_Traveler said:


> If there is something in the frame that isn't integral or supportive of the meaning then it's prominence should be suppressed as much as possible - cropping, darkening, blurring, lowering of contrast.
> All those are hints to the viewer's unconscious parser that the 'something' isn't of much importance.



Agree completely.  These changes have an unconscious effect on the viewer that the non-photographer viewer generally is not even aware of.


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## KenC (Apr 17, 2013)

comment added to blog - easier than I thought ...


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## nmoody (Apr 17, 2013)

Well written and excellent examples. I liked how you broke it all down to details.


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## The_Traveler (Apr 17, 2013)

&#8203;


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## weepete (Apr 17, 2013)

That was a good read Lew, well done. I think you pitched it just right and explained it nicely. 

I enjoyed it thanks


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## Derrel (Apr 17, 2013)

That's one shapely bell curve you've got there in Post #12, Lew.


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## amolitor (Apr 17, 2013)

I'M NUMBER FOUR! I'M NUMBER FOUR!

There are interesting and quite deep reasons why the range of reactions (and anything else, really) tends to approximate a bell curve. If the situation is complex, a bell curve is almost always the right guess. (cf. the assumption in post #7)


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