The Photograph: A Strange, Confined Space

This richly evocative study of photography has two major emphases. The first is that the language of description (be it title, caption, or text) is deeply implicated in how a viewer looks at photographs. The more detailed the description, the more precisely the viewer’s observation is directed. This leads to the second emphasis, that the use of a photograph determines its meaning. The imaginative use of photographs as metaphor is explored in works of literature by Marcel Proust, Robert Lowell, Roland Barthes, and Robert Musil.