Recently I visited Andre Kertesz's exhibition 'On Reading' at the Photographer's Gallery in London (http://www.photographersgallery.com/). The show reminded me of a picture I had taken back in April 2007 and which I display here.
The image has three main elements: The person reading the book, the book itself and the location the picture was taken. All three elements have something in common, which is that they are not clearly identifiable. We cannot be certain about the gender of the subject, as we cannot see her/him. However, we could stereotypically say it is a female because of the red bracelet on her left hand. As far as the book is concerned, we can identify the author, but the title is covered by the reader’s hand. The location again, could be anywhere in the world, although the columns in the background give us a hint of something ancient. Therefore we could locate it somewhere in Rome or Athens for example.
But, does this lack of information make the image an unreliable social artefact or pictures do remain the sole key to represent reality accurately even when we are in doubt?
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