Can a Picture be Worth Less than a Thousand Words?

In our society, we are socialized to look at bodies a certain way. There are norms for viewing female bodies, male bodies, elderly bodies, children’s bodies, etc. In these bodies, we know what we are supposed to be looking at and how we are supposed to be looking at them. However, as Jay Prosser writes in his chapter “My Second Skin”, the norms for viewing transbodies are very different. Prosser uses Roland Barthes’s idea of the studium, or the dominant way of seeing. For transbodies, the studium is “the tell”, or the part of the body that shows that the object has been altered in some way. This concept is most easily found in photography. When we view a picture of a transbody, we search for a sign such a scar or a particular body part that will help us “figure out” the body.

One common convention that advises how we should look at a photograph is the caption. Jana Marcus’s project of photographs of transgendered bodies titled “Transfigurations” includes slides of images of transgendered people, each with a large caption and personal statement from the person. The pictures alone are beautiful, but the addition of words adds a whole new depth to each photograph and person. While the words are there to “illuminate who transgendered people are”, I think they also tell us how to view each photograph. The photo I am most interested in is of Jack, age 26: Jack is a female to male transgendered person whose photo caption reads “I am the best of both worlds”. He goes on to explain that he still has the female intuition and qualities with the persona of a man such as his father. When I initially looked at the picture, I saw a tough looking man with thick eyebrows and facial hair who looked anything but nurturing and compassionate (as he describes himself). After reading the caption and text, the figure in the image took on a whole new persona. I could see gentleness in his eyes that resembled the qualities he described in the caption. I believe that in this case, the punctum, or thing in the photograph that interrupts the dominant way of seeing, is the caption. The studium in this case is to view the man with thick facial hair and dark eyes as tough. However, the caption tells us a different story and gives away the true character and persona of the person.

Another interesting thing about this particular man is his body position and clothing in the photograph. Many of the other people in both this project as well as Prosser’s “Second Skins” are shown without clothing so that the tell is something we can see on their body. Surgical scars from mastectomies or a lack of a penis clearly tell the reader something about that body without using words. In this image, without the caption, we wouldn’t know that he is a transbody. Jack is wearing a business suit and tie, and we can only see the top of his shoulders and his head. This says two things. The first is that we often rely on seeing the whole body (and a naked one at that) to understand a person. It also emphasizes the “intelligent” and “well respected” qualities of his father that he desires to possess. For Jack, the transformation from woman to man gave him the opportunity to be like his hero, his father. Jack, rather than using a photograph to tell the story of a transgendered person, he is showing what the transformation has allowed him to become.

http://www.janamarcus.com/docus/TransPresentation/sld006.htm

Prosser, Jay. “My Second Skin.” Light in the Dark Room: Photography and
Loss. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 163-81.