I found this image on the Library and Archives facebook page the other day with the description reading only "What Have We Here - Tell us what you think this image is about. Stay tuned! We'll reveal the caption in a few days."
This image really got me thinking about two of the articles that we read in particular: Roland Barthes "The Photographic Message," and James Opp's "Picturing Communism: Yousuf Karsh, Canadair, and Cold War Advertising." While it may not seem at the outset that these two articles have much in common, it was really two key messages in the articles that I was thinking about in my viewing of this particular image.
As I had mentioned in class, Barthes wrote something that intrigued me in his discussion of text as it relates to images. He writes that "the text constitutes a parasitic message design to connote the image, to quicken it with one or more second-order signifieds. In other words... the image no longer illustrates the words; it is now the words which, structurally, are parasitic on the image"
When I first came across this image of clowns, it was Barthes' words that I was reflecting on as I analyzed what I was looking at. When I discovered this image, the first thing that I did was to click the image on facebook in order to find the description of the image. I was looking for some words to tell me explicitly what it was that I was looking at: a date, location, or a reason why this image was significant. Essentially, I was looking for some textual descriptors to tell me what I was seeing. Without these textual indicators, I was reluctant to rely on my visual assumptions of what I was seeing. As Barthes implies, I (as a viewer) am not looking at the image first in order to clarify the accompanying text. Rather, I am looking for textual clues to clarify what my eyes are seeing.
This leads into Opp's piece where I was struck by his analysis on the role of text in anti-communist advertisements. Opp writes that "[p]aradoxically, the more concrete the images of communism became, the longer the textual explanation had to be to contain the possible meanings that could be "read" into the photograph. Rather than making the nature of the threat more visually self-evident, photographs seemed to make it less so." Although the image of clowns is not about anti-communist advertising, the sentiment is applicable in that it implies that a photograph without textual accompaniment can be quite ambiguous.
Thus, when I looked at this image, without any textual cues to guide my viewing of the image what I saw was what I assumed was a circus troupe of some sort. I noticed that none of the clowns seem to be smiling, and while I could not date the picture, I saw some clues that, given the proper knowledge, might help someone to attach a date. I noticed that one of the clowns are aboriginal in stereotypical dress, only two women, and a black man. I also noticed a man dressed as a soldier that was holding a gun and that many of the clowns are holding instruments, which leads me to believe that they had some type of marching band. Other than this, I found myself really unsure of what it was that I was seeing.
Both Barthes and Opp drew my attention to issues surrounding the use of textual information with photographic images, and this really brought to my attention how this text really can influence the way that images are read by their audiences, myself included.
And by the way, after this image had been posted for a few days, LAC posted a link to the description of the image. Title: Clown Band. Date: 1914-1919. Place of Creation: No place, unknown, or undetermined. Subject Heading: Sports & Amusements - Musical. Does this change how the viewer "reads" the image? That is for another blog post.
