The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning

432 Pages·2009·8.023 MB·English

by  John Tagg

The Disciplinary Frame
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The Disciplinary Frame
Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning
John Tagg
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
The Introduction was Wrst published in Crossings: A Counter-Disciplinary Journal of Philosophical,
Cultural, Historical, and Literary Studies3 (1999): 187–212. A shorter version of chapter 3 appeared as
“Melancholy Realism: Walker Evans’s Resistance to Meaning,” Narrative: The Journal of the Society
for the Study of Narrative Literature11, no. 1 (January 2003): 3–77. An earlier form of chapter 5 was
Wrst published in translation as “Der Zeichenstift der Geschichte,” Fotogeschichte49 (Marburg:
Jonas Verlag, 1993), 27–42 (translated by Sebastian Wohlfeil); it was published in English in
Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video,ed. Patrice Petro (Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1995), 285–303. A version of chapter 6 was Wrst published in Art History15,
no. 3 (September 1992): 72–94.
The poetry of the book’s epigraph was originally published in Hugh MacDiarmid, Complete Poems
(Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1993). Reprinted courtesy of Carcanet Press Limited.
Copyright 2009 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tagg, John.
The disciplinary frame : photographic truths and the capture of meaning / John Tagg.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-4287-8 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-4288-5 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Photography—Philosophy. 2. Photography—History. I. Title.
TR183.T344 2009
779—dc22
2008039551
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Bill Tagg
The sunlicht still on me, you row’d in clood,
We look upon each ither noo like hills
Across a valley. I’m nae mair your son.
It is my mind, nae son o’ yours, that looks,
And the great darkness o’ your death comes up
And equals it across the way.
A livin’ man upon a deid man thinks
And ony sma’er thocht’s impossible.
—hugh macdiarmid
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Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xv
Introduction: The Violence of Meaning xix
1. The One-Eyed Man and the One-Armed Man:
Camera, Culture, and the State 1
2. The Plane of Decent Seeing: Documentary
and the Rhetoric of Recruitment 51
3. Melancholy Realism: Walker Evans’s
Resistance to Meaning 95
4. Running and Dodging, 1943: The Breakup
of the Documentary Moment 179
5. The Pencil of History: Photography, History,
Archive 209
6. A Discourse with Shape of Reason Missing:
Art History and the Frame 235
Notes 265
Bibliography 357
Index 379
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Illustrations
Figure 1. Page from The Emigrants,by W. G. Sebald xxi
Figure 2. Honoré Daumier, “Vous avez la parole,
expliquez-vous, vous êtes libre!” 1835 xxiv
Figure 3. Thomas Byrnes, “The Inspector’s Model,” 1885 xxv
Figure 4. Sir Luke Fildes, “‘The Bashful Model,’” 1873 xxvii
Figure 5. “An Unwilling Subject,” 1899 xxvii
Figure 6. Visitors to the National Gallery of Art, 1947 xxxv
Figure 7. DuBroni wet-plate collodion camera, c. 1865 2
Figure 8. “Prints stored in vertical Wle, Survey of Surrey” 4
Figure 9. Apparatus for photographing prisoners 6
Figure 10. Alphonse Bertillon experimenting with his
apparatus 26
Figure 11. “International Institute of Photographic
Documents, Brussels” 27
Figure 12. Page with photograph by Walker Evans, from
Edward Steichen, “The F.S.A. Photographers,” 1938 53
Figure 13. Dorothea Lange, “Family, one month from
South Dakota, now on the road in Tulelake, Siskiyou
County, California,” 1939 56
Figure 14. “Look in her Eyes!” Midweek Pictorial,1936 81
Figure 15. John Collier, “Washington, D.C.: Preparing the
defense bond sales photomural,” 1941 86
Figure 16. “Children of the Forgotten Man!” Look,1937 92
Figure 17. Cover of Life,February 15, 1937 97
Figure 18. “The Flood Leaves Its Victims on the Bread
Line,” Life,1937 103
IX