"Charleston"

Film Art would look at this picture and try to analyze its different meanings including its referential meaning, its explicit meaning, its implicit meaning and, its symptomatic meaning.

Referential- A woman holding a baby stands against a wall.

Explicit- Since this is just a photograph, there doesn't seem to be any apparent explicit meaning.

Implicit Meaning- The black woman seems to be the child's caretaker. The way the woman and the child are interacting suggest that they are very familiar with one another. The two both seem to be looking at something, perhaps suggesting that the two are spectators.

Symptomatic Meaning- A black woman is holding a white baby, and by the title of the photograph, we can infer that this picture takes place in Charleston, South Carolina. The symptomatic meaning of this photograph has to do with race relations in the Deep South. One symptomatic meaning is that African Americans are stereotyped as employees of Caucasians, because the woman in the picture appears to be the child's caretaker. Another symptomatic meaning may be that ignorance knows no racism. From the subjects' clothing and the cars on the street, this picture seems to be from the 1950s or 1960s when racial tensions were very high. But this picture seems void of tension, as if to suggest that babies, in their state of innocence, are colorblind and don't know how to discriminate.

Practices of Looking would take a different approach to analyzing this photo. According to the book, photographic truth is a myth. "The creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selection, framing, and personalization." Instead of just analyzing the different meanings of the photograph, viewers should think about the perspective from which this picture was taken.

These subjects seem very carefully chosen-a white baby and a black woman. It also appears that there is no one else on the street, so perhaps this picture was staged and the photographer wanted to create this very scenario to share his thought on race relations in the South. The photograph is taken from the side and not head on. Perhaps this was done so to capture both the woman's and the baby's gazes. The framing suggests that the subjects are looking at something. Perhaps the photographer is suggesting that they are onlookers to the racial tensions in the South. They themselves are not displaying racism, but they are watching it all around them.