Surveying the Photograph

The photograph seems to want to say nothing; it only wants to awaken us to the material of the photograph. It speaks of the other half of the photograph — the negative that never appears to the public and remains in the dark privacy of the darkroom. It points to the perforations along the film’s edges and shows them off to us. The perforations are flat and not indented. Perhaps it wants to say that one can seep into the borders and even peek beyond them. Although, inside the holes, there is nothing but darkness. The photographer speaks of numbers, perhaps intending to touch on the multiplicity and quantity of pictures, and to critique this quantity. The letters also seem to represent mass industrial production and maybe hint at the relationship between photography and language. The flatness of the photograph is overwhelming. On this flat surface, only letters and numbers create a slight depth. The black and white areas seem to form a city map. This black and white geometric design is unclear — is it a building in the city or the material of the photograph? The geometric shapes, numbers, printed letters, and film perforations all seem to speak of engineering and surveying, but they engineer and survey within an ambiguous form and material, remaining vague.