The Found Photograph and the Limits of Meaning

Barry Mauer

continued . . .

The ideal found photograph exhibition would be one in which the viewer is invited to try out the different viewing attitudes I have described in this essay—voyeur, detective, Surrealist, and social scientist. As a voyeur, the viewer would be invited to take pleasure in the intimate moments of others, enjoying a distanced view of others through a lens of cultural stereotypes. As a detective, the viewer would be invited to find evidence in the photographs and to make inferences about their meaning, including inferences about the photographers' intentions, about the lives of the people in the photographs, about the causes of their loss. As a Surrealist, the viewer would be invited to find those photographic details that elude our systems of signification. As a social scientist, the viewer would be invited to test social science hypotheses against the evidence presented in the photographs, including hypotheses about the role of photography in the family and in the museum, and about our sense-making apparatus. Such an exhibition (assuming that one could be created) would enable the viewer to know the differences between the viewing habits of the voyeur, the detective, the Surrealist, and the cultural anthropologist.

—Barry Mauer

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