Intersections Between Language and Photography

“When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it’s this crazy chase of, which face? Which one is the one?”

~Francesco Clemente

Unmanipulated image

Manipulated

Manipulated

Reflecting on Clemente’s quote, I was compelled to consider the portrait which, by definition, is “a likeness of a person…that is created by a painter or photographer” (freedictionary.com). And here is the problem, description involves language, and language meaning, and meaning semantics–and, you get my meaning, right? Words create problems. Take “likeness” for example.

Is the portrait above a “likeness” of Alix because I “created” it? Or, is it a likeness because a photograph can only project one irreducible split-second of the millions & billions of split-seconds that Alix is? Or is it a likeness, a semblance, because a photograph is not and can never be more than a two dimensional understanding of the thing itself?

I suppose it all comes back to the inescapability of meaning and the limitations that, linguistically, meaning places on interpretation.

Yet the image, the portrait of Alix, well, it has a mood. An emotion. I feel something when I look at the image. Something in between the meaning of sadness and tragic. Something like resignation. Something like…

slr/10