The objective of this paper is to critically analyze John Thomson and Adolphe Smith’s photograph entitled Old Furniture, taken in 1877. The photograph can be found in the following link . The author of this paper shall critically analyze the said piece using the key points from Susan Sontag’s book entitled On Photography. Specifically, key areas of focus of the analysis would be on the concepts of Plato’s Cave, social milieu, and Melancholy Objects.
Plato’s Cave
The image above can be directly related to the concept of Plato’s Cave, which, according to Sontag, is a concept that explains that photography (or photographs) is essentially a reflection of current realities in society, representing a catalogue of cultural and social beliefs . In the Old Furniture, one can see the image of three people, interacting in a shared space (in a street corner) between a furniture shop and a street stall. Now, this photograph clearly reflects the reality that people living during that era had. People in the busy streets of Church Lane, Holborn (the location where the image was captured in 1877) used to do business transactions not indoors (which is a common and a required practice in today’s society) but outdoors, in the middle of the. This was customary to the people of London back in the day and this was their reality, captured in a photograph. This basically is a direct application of Sontag’s concept of Plato’s Cave.
The Concept of Social Milieu in the Old Furniture
This concept was discussed in the second chapter of Sontag’s book. It basically suggests that the popularization of photography and its use in the western countries (e.g. United States and the United Kingdom) came at a time when a lot of other ideologies were budding such as realism, anti-humanism, and surrealism—which coincidentally fueled the growth of photography and its use because of its ability to capture events. Now, relating this to the photograph, the furniture shop owner (the guy inside the building) was the only one looking at the camera when the picture was taken. The two females, on the other hand, can be presumed to be executing a certain street business transaction (because again, that was the reality back then). Now, what makes these findings significant is the fact that images were not used to capture still images of candid events before; that idea was only developed recently and to have a candid photograph like this at a time when photography and its use was still on its early stages is just extraordinary. Additionally, the focus of the camera lens evidently appears to be on the furniture shop and the three personas in the photograph (and not on the streets). It can therefore be assumed that the focus of the person who took the shot was to capture the reality of the event or on what was happening.
Surrealism and the Old Furniture
It can be argued that from a contemporary perspective, the mood being emitted by the Old Furniture is surreal. Now, the reason why there were a lot of images with a theme (surreal mood) like this that were documented and released during the 20th century is the fact that Surrealism used to be an artistic movement—characterized by use of materials (including images) that represent surrealism (e.g. unconscious thoughts and dreams). Additionally, what makes this image surreal is the fact that it can be interpreted in a lot of ways, depending on the person one is going to ask. One person, for example, may interpret that the photograph was a documentation of a street altercation, a family moving out after being devastated by a calamity or any catastrophic incident (e.g. war, famine, economic crises), or simply a depiction of a normal day to day life in the streets of Britain.
Works Cited
Smith, A. and J. Thomson. "Old Furniture (Photograph)." Digital Library (1877): http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:toj386div. Web.
Sontag, S. "On Photography." Picador (2001): 01-224. Print.
