The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning

by John Tagg

Photography can seem to capture reality and the eye like no other medium, commanding belief and wielding the power of proof. In some cases, a photograph itself is attributed the force of the real. How can a piece of chemically discolored paper have such potency? How does the meaning of a photograph become fixed? In  The Disciplinary Frame , John Tagg claims that, to answer these questions, we must look at the ways in which all that frames photography—the discourse that surrounds it and the institutions that circulate it— determines what counts as truth.

The meaning and power of photographs, Tagg asserts, are discursive effects of the regimens that produce them as official record, documentary image, historical evidence, or art. Teasing out the historical processes involved, he examines a series of revealing case studies from nineteenth-century European and American photographs to Depression-era works by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Margaret Bourke-White to the conceptualist photography of John Baldessari.

Central to this transformative work are questions of cultural strategy, the growth of the state, and broad issues of power and how the discipline of the frame holds both photographic image and viewer in place, without erasing the possibility for evading, and even resisting, capture. Photographs, Tagg ultimately finds, are at once too big and too small for the frames in which they are enclosed—always saying more than is wanted and less than is desired.

Genres: Photography, Philosophy

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

ohn Tagg is Professor of Art History and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University. His books, which often focus on the relationship between photography and power, include The Burden of Representation: Essays of Photographies and Histories, Grounds of Dispute: Art History, Cultural Politics and the Discursive Field, and The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Regimens and the Capture of Meaning.

Reviews

[Youngki.bear · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this for a seminar presentation. It made my brain implode. Probably one of the most challenging reads of my graduate student career. The experience was thoroughly unpleasant. The ideas are interesting, but the writing is close to incomprehensible.

[Casey Browne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Photography can seem to capture reality like no other medium, wielding the power of proof. How can a piece of chemically discoloured paper have such potency? How does the meaning of a photograph become fixed? In The Disciplinary Frame, John Tagg claims that to answer these questions, we must look at how all that frames photography determines what counts as truth. Probably one of the most challenging reads of my undergraduate student career. The experience was thoroughly unpleasant made my brain implode. The ideas are interesting, but the writing is close to incomprehensible.

[Jen]

I picked up this book while researching copyright and image ownership... tried getting into it a couple times but eventually had to return it to the library without reading much of it. It looks like it's worth a gander, but it didn't grab me when I attempted it.