Contradictory Evidence

– A series of photos are gathered here.

– These photos are bound as a collection. The above collection may have come out by accident; It means that the objects are not necessarily of a single collection (not belonging to a single individual/family). It is likely that, unlike the present photographs, the depicted objects were always far apart. However, you can imagine these objects are all items of the same household. 

One can check the arrangement of the photographs. This arrangement may express a theme or a message. For example, it might refer to different preoccupations of someone at various stages of life. 

The collection can be subjected to validation if you have access to the required shreds of evidence. After proper investigation, you might come up with this question: To express a given theme and to be faithful to reality, or even regarding the expressive or aesthetic aspects, wasn’t a specific object’s photo -the photo of wish is absent in the collection -of more priority? This way of reading depends on whether we have reached a convincing judgment about the collection’s intended theme.

– In the world of art (how can you be sure that the photos are collected to be presented as works of art?), it is generally emphasized that loyalty to the external reality is not important and valuable. The presence of 46 photographs together is enough to read them as a symbolic collection (apart from the above objects belonging to a household or not).

– Reading the collection as cultural and social symbols is also possible. The photos represent manners, personal/collective history, characteristic attributes, and socio/cultural conditions of their time. Suppose we adhere to this method of interpretation. In that case, the collection can be considered a deliberate fabrication or manipulation, with an ironic approach to commercializing history through retro.

– Reading these photos as hieroglyphic signs is worthwhile too. It means imagining a visual writing system. For this reading, it is necessary to ignore cultural and ideological references. Then what remains that can be meaningful? You should pay attention to syntactic relationships. It means the connection of each photo with other photos. And in that case, how can meaningful sentences be made from juxtaposing images?

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