Every photograph expresses the verification of a fact: the image that features in the photograph took place in front of the camera. This apparent obviousness underlies the ontological basis for the documentary function of photography. And it is due to this strength of evidence that we use it in identity documents and to illustrate news articles in the press.
From a historical and cultural perspective, photography established a mimetic pact with reality. However, if we look more closely, we have to accept that photographs are images composed of forms, textures and colours, in a more or less ordered way, that a visually literate observer would be able to interpret. Or, perhaps, it is not that simple and that is why the today’s image recognition software is so inadequate. It is easy to describe what we see by using limited repertoires of conventional labels and semantic categories. But it is impossible to assign plausible meanings when we do not know what the context is. A photograph without context becomes a misleading statement and consequently a stimulus for the imagination.
Here we present a set of photographs taken from the archives of the Mexican magazine Alarma!, which focused on gruesome coverage of violent crime. The images are shown without their captions, and with no information about the events or circumstances under which they were taken, there is nothing to give us a clue about their origins, and as such they no longer show anything beyond their own ambiguity: they are no longer documents but instead they are monuments to a crazy speculation.
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THE GAME OF STORYTELLING
An image is always a screen which we project our previous experience onto and as a result subject ourselves to a kind of Rorschach test – that psychological test of perception which analyses our responses to abstract inkblots.
Hence, any photograph can be the beginning of a story. Here we are invited to take on this challenge. What do these photographs express? What do they suggest? What might be their short story? Undoubtedly each person will offer different answers depending on their field of knowledge and their creativity, thus demonstrating that photographs can be evidence (?) of many things all at the same time.
Please write the meanings that these photographs convey to you on the post-it notes and stick the notes to the photos.
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