Mitchell's essay, The Photographic Essay: Four Case Studies, I found many ideas difficult to understand. The essay revolved around how photographs can be presented with and without an accompanying text and how these two rudiments relate to each other. Throughout the text, Mitchell is trying to show that "photography is and is not a language, and that retrospectively, language is and is not photography" (Mitchell 522). The entire understanding of a photograph and its accompanying text is a difficult relationship to understand. The relationship is described as "a principal site of struggle for value and power in contemporary representations of reality" (Mitchell 522). Mitchell uses multiple quotations to try to back up his point. He also uses difficult language throughout the essay. With a combination of a difficult topic, multiple quotations, and difficult language, I found this essay difficult to read.
The entire topic of photographs and its relation to text is a difficult undertaking. Mitchell assumed that we as the reader understood the components of art in photography. By not explaining this, the reader has no understanding of photography or any of the elements about it. Mitchell's explanation of the relationship between photographs and text completely lost the reader. Another area for concern with Mitchell's essay is that he talks about four very different essays, but does not prove a point. All he does is give a basic summary of what was stated. By not explaining the importance of the different ideas from each essay, the reader has no point in knowing about each of these independent essays. Mitchell wrote his essay based on four other essays, but did not clearly give a good enough background for the reader to form their own conclusion. Mitchell leaves much of the understanding of this topic to personal interpretation, which is impossible to do without enough background.
