the other and the space of the other is assumed to exist as a coherent narrative,
constructed through various arenas of desire and then magnified ten fold for cultural
consumption and mass recognition. What are often left out of these stories are the
epistemologies that simply cannot be captured in this medium because they are beyond
the lens of the camera.
Included in various genres that narrate people and space is the medium of
photography. The photo provokes and engages meaning making in a variety of ways,
such as in the form of narration and the telling of a particular story and history, as well as
semiotically or through the expression of symbols that signify identities. Photos tell
stories of a history, evoke emotions, and attempt to represent culture and the space of the
other, as well as accent Western gender roles. As the lens of the camera aims outwards
towards the mysterious and the mundane, the flow of imagery is arrested and stilled by
the shutter. The piecing together of these instances forms a narrative quality where
disparate individual photos are strung together to imply a story. Alan Trachtenberg
speaks of the photo as “a two-dimensional illusion of three-dimensional space in which
something worth seeing can be seen.”
2
It is in the judgment of the worthiness of the
viewed, and then the subsequent ‘bringing into view’ of that object/space, whereby the
photo manufactures and produces a reality. In some instances, arenas of desire are
constructed and maintained through the consistent montage of photographic imagery,
thereby helping to produce the self and the creation of the others as the social byproducts
of this technology.
2
Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History. New York:
The Noonday Press, 1989; 131.
Convention