Photographic Truth

I find the argument of Photographic Truth to be an interesting one. The term is used suggest that the image of a photograph (which uses light to 'capture' the image of our material world), also captures truth as most agree the images we see of the current moment are true, and a camera recreating 'one' of these moments also stays true.

Where the idea starts to get interesting, is where one starts questioning what "truths" then can be taken from a photograph that is completely original and not resulting from personnel inference and cultural persuasion? This question goes deep into what we see at the root of human vision, and mind. I do not believe in the myth of Photographic Truth because I know that there always must be at least some subjectivity for photographs to physically make sense. Every picture in some way must only be a 'piece' of a whole moment and not actually an entire moment. So as hard as we may try to "get into another moment" with a photograph, we obviously cannot because a photograph is only a piece, a single limited perspective, from which an entire whole cannot be comprehended. The truth is that one can look at an image and see whatever it is they want to see until one's mind beings making distinctions, assumptions and connections that may or not be factual.

However when one doesn't have to look at a photograph and try to "think" of what the picture is, it pops right into the head, its already there. This is because we have already constructed a reality on how we think things are, what Robert Barthes calls myth , the hidden set of rules that determines how we create meanings and associate them. Barthes believes that myth is specific to certain groups whether culturally or throughout time. I agree with Barthes that there are myths that are specific to different groups, but I believe they also can exist at many different levels, and that while some are held by small cultural groups, other are broader "rules" that restrict our perception that go so far as mankind.