Research: Victor Burgin

In the chapter Looking at Photographs, Victor Burgin starts off by saying that we see photographs nearly everywhere we go, but we aren't really aware of that fact. He argues that photography doesn't get as much recognition as it probably should. Comparing photographs to films or books he says that they 'are not seen by deliberate choice, they have no special time or space allotted to them[...]', whereas films are seen as 'the result of a voluntary act which quite clearly entails an expenditure of time and/or money.'

This also includes, that we take photographs for granted and thus don't recognise their importance and the cultural meaning that they carry.

'Work in semiotics showed that there is no language of photography, no single signifying system.. There is rather a heterogeneous complex of codes upon which photography may draw.' Thus Burgin shows that there is not a single way of reading a photograph as there is for watching a film or reading a book. 

It is also interesting to mention that 'we rarely see a photograph in use, which does not have a caption or a title, it is more usual to encounter photographs attached to long texts, or with copy superimposed over them'. (But why is this so? Do photographers feel the need to explain there photographs so they don't get interpreted wrongly? )

Furthermore he takes into account the gaze when looking at a photograph saying that 'The signifying system of photography, like that of  classical painting, at once depicts a scene and the gaze of the spectator, an object and a viewing subject. 

So when looking at the picture one doesn't only have to take into account the object that it represented on the photograph but also the gaze of the person that looks at this photograph, it's a double-way mechanism. 

Additionally, it is particularly interesting that Burgin draws onto the 'mirror-stage' of an infant to describe the process of decoding a photograph. 

This theory and the theory of the gaze in relation to photography are very important to consider when thinking about the role that individuals' identities play in the decoding of a picture. 

Finally, Victor Burgin draws on 'good' composition and says that schools know how to teach what it is but they never teach their students 'why it is' and thus he concludes by saying that good composition is a necessary device in a photograph to keep the eye of the viewer within the frame.

Burgin's text is very intense, not easy to read and contains a lot of theory. And although I may not have understood every single word of this reading I nevertheless have to say that it has been essential to me, because it has helped me realise how complex a photograph is, and that for my project it won't be enough to just go out and take some random shots, I really have to think about composition and about the gaze of those that will look at my photographs afterwards, in their very own way. 

Reading: 
Thinking Photography, Chapter 6: Looking at Photographs - Victor Burgin