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The Button on the Carpet
By Pedro Meyer I
went to a farewell party given for a friend of mine; it was in a home
in the Hollywood Hills. I was standing around waiting for the food to
be served when I noticed that a button had fallen off my shirt.
I bent
down to look for it on the floor and to my surprise I discovered lying
right there before me an array of colors and shapes that I had not noticed
before. My first reaction was to grab my camera and record an image
of the moment. I have looked at that picture off and on for quite some
time now; it has grown on me. I started to wonder why.
It dawned
on me that I didn't have a clue as to who was in the picture. I did
not know the person sitting there with the green pants and purple socks.
From looking at the evidence I couldn't determine the profession of
the individual wearing such attire, after all it could be a painter,
a lawyer or doctor (remember, this was Hollywood), an art historian,
an actor, a curator, a caterer, undercover policeman, athlete, decorator,
clown, salesman, tourist, poet, web designer, musician, etc . I do remember
however that they were all very amused that I would take a picture of
the button as I had found it on the carpet. As so often happens, only
the photographer knows what is going on within the frame. The evidence
found in this picture sends one scuttling for a time reference anchored
in the sixties (even the shoes!), yet here we were in the mid-nineties
when the picture was made. Photography is so confusing when it comes
to being a reference to the "real," isn't it?
I am drawn to
such pictures because photography is open-ended, and capable of making
countless statements that have more to do with the viewer's perceptions
than with what the image actually contains. Some viewers would find
the fact that there was a button on the carpet ( I did not put it there
digitally...honest!) an ineluctable proof of the documentary integrity
of this picture (provided nothing else had been altered, obviously)
but would mention nothing about the color rendition of the photograph,
evidently assuming that the colors in the carpet, and socks, and table,
etc. actually were identical to those which could be seen at the party.
But how would I know what those exact colors were? How does anyone remember
an exact color? Does it matter what the exact colors actually were?
Judging by the
great effort it takes to make color reproductions as good a match as
possible to the original ( both in print and on the screen, as well
as in photographic prints), I can safely assume that in most cases we
are observing nothing more than a "close" reproduction of what the "real"
color actually looked like. Now this is not a trifling issue, as many
psychologists, art historians, and designers would agree, as colors
have a definite emotional connection to what human beings derive from
looking at them.
If we
find that colors within photographs hardly ever live up to their original
reference, and no one appears to make too much of a fuss about this
(yet we know that the values of colors are undoubtedly important), then
why would we raise our eyebrows if the button in my picture had been
placed there by me? Why am I asked, " but you did not put the button
there, did you? " and yet no one ever asks me for the exact color match
of the socks, for instance.
I now
understand why I have been attracted to this picture over time. We don't
know who is in the picture, when it was made, nor if anything that is
shown to us in the image actually was the way it looks.
Funny,
some people consider such a straight picture (I even have a negative
to prove that it was not altered) to be a documentary image!
Pedro Meyer's photographs are found in the collections of more than 40 major museums throughout the world. He's also authored several books, including Los Cohetes Duraron Todo el Dia; Tempii di America; and Espejo de Espinas. His column appears each month in Camera Works.
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 ©Pedro Meyer 2001
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