Reading Groups: How do we read a photograph - Graham Clarke

In our second reading, we looked at Graham Clarke's "How do we read a photograph?"
Link below:
https://blackboard.uwe.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-4426592-dt-content-rid-7664335_5/library/eReserves/UA1APQ-15-1_15sep_1/How%20do%20we%20read%20a%20photograph.pdf

We were discussing the interpretation of photographs and how we view them... How others/the photographer wants us to view them and what feelings we should have towards it. Photos are constructed in order to tell us what to think. Other people may have different perspectives of that image and what they see but the photographer often includes feelings or emotions of how they want you feel about this image. They have their own meaning, but of a 2D representation rather than the real thing. If you were placed in the middle of a lavender field, physically. You'd have a closer connection with that place as you are actually there, rather than if you were looking at a photograph of it. Therefore some photographers position the camera to get certain angles or perspectives as if you were actually there, wanting to feel connected to it and feel as if you're physically there.

Specifically we were studying the noun 'Arbiter' a person who has the sole or absolute power of judging or determining. How the photographer is the arbiter of a photograph, they decide how you should feel about this person, place or object. You are being controlled by the photograph to feel and think a certain way towards it.
It's interesting how your perspective can change on a photograph once you know a piece of information about it that you didn't before. For example Sally Mann - 'Family Pictures' is one of her pieces of work which includes black and white/sepia tone images of nude children. At first you would think children + nude images = disaster, non PC, inappropriate? But once you find out that she's photographing her own children then it becomes more acceptable, as we didn't know the relationship between the photographer and the subject before reading up on it. This proves how our perspective of photos can change and will change once knowing a piece of information.