Mary Brockmeyer’s Wedding Picture: Exploring the Intersection of Photographs and Oral History Interviews

Abstract

“The theory of the photo as an analogue of reality has been abandoned,” Umberto Eco wrote in 1982, “even by those who once upheld it—we know that it is necessary to be trained to recognize the photographic image.”1 Photography theorists Victor Burgin, John Tagg, and Allan Sekula made the same point and suggested a number of critical approaches to “reading” photographs. They argued that although photography in itself was not a language it was nevertheless embedded in codes.2 Marianne Hirsch and Martha Langford refined this connection between photography and language by pointing to the narrative and “oral” qualities of photography. Hirsch argues that photographs are embedded in narratives and must therefore always be read as “imagetexts” Langford argues that family photo albums may be interpreted by exposing their “oral structure.”3 Thus, a picture does not say more than a thousand words, but rather holds the potential to evoke multiple meanings.