Meaning-making
Engaging the Photographic Image: Mandated Imagining Seeing or Recognition?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mario Slugan
One of the crucial debates in contemporary philosophy of photography is whether photographic images mandate imaginings or not. Are we supposed to imagine the objects of the photograph or should we simply see and recognize what they represent? According to one of the key contributors to the debate – Kendall Walton – all analog photographs allow us to see their subjects indirectly in the sense that mirrors and binoculars allow us to see objects indirectly through the manipulation of light. But Walton claims that photographs also mandate imagining seeing the subject represented directly as though we were in the subject’s presence. I argue that this view is misplaced. The key reason Walton thinks photographs mandate imagining seeing is the need to explain a particular experience of photography and cinema – viz., the notion of presence of the objects photographed. But if it is the notion of presence that is really at stake then there is no need for invoking imagining seeing something directly. As Walton, building on André Bazin, puts it, seeing something through a photograph is like seeing something through a telescope, a microscope or a mirror. And all these visual aids are routinely seen as bringing the objects whose images they reflect closer to us, as bringing them into our presence. But if no visual aids (mirrors, telescopes, etc.) mandate imagining seeing to evoke the experience of presence, and if photographs are like other visual aids, then there is no reason to assume photographs mandate imagining seeing either.
Using the Imagery of No Country for Old Men to Upack Its Meaning
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James Wilson
For many viewers of the 2007 Coen Brothers' film "No Country for Old Men," the film’s ending left two central puzzles unsolved: what did the ending mean? Who (or what) was Chigur? This essay offers an answer to both questions and the answers are related. I argue that the ending brings the film to a proper conclusion. To understand the ending and what Sheriff Ed Tom Bell's dreams symbolize in the film it is necessary to follow the imagery of the fire in the buffalo horn Bell describes in his dream.
Photovoice: Shining a Light on the Lived Experience of Aged Care
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Evonne Miller
In this paper, I discuss the practical, theoretical, and ethical questions of using the participatory visual method of photovoice with older people living in residential aged care. Twenty residents of a facility in Brisbane, Australia were given cameras and asked to visually capture highlights, lowlights, two weeks and a day in their life; these photographs were collaboratively shortlisted, forming a large public exhibition in 2017 entitled ‘Living in Aged Care: A photographic exhibition of laughter, loss and leisure’. The exhibition provided rare and intimate insight into the often-private world of residential aged care, with this paper reflecting on the process, learnings and implications. Drawing on a diverse range of project data (participants' photographs, in-depth interviews, researchers' field notes, exhibition evaluations), this paper documents the core exhibition image and narratives, with the participant-created visual images a powerful tool for public engagement that challenged many existing stereotypes about life in aged care. In a society where, all too often "the voices of professionals become louder and older people's voices become softer" (Powell, 2013, p.29), a key project strength was how participatory photography empowered and gave a voice to older age care residents. The camera, integral to the photovoice method, altered the researcher/participant ethical dynamics by becoming a continual ‘connector’ to the researcher. It also took on a distinct agency, acting as a non-threatening ‘portal’ that lengthened contact, and enabled unplanned participant revelation. This paper reflects on the potential of 'images’ for engaging with, reaching and starting a dialogue with diverse audiences.
