It seems to me that Hochschild's article is based on a misapprehension or a misrepresentation. Attention is not the process of giving meaning to what you see, it is concentration on one particular thing among other things. His and Roquentin's ruminations seem to be flights from attention to what they're looking at. Hochschild quickly moves his attention to cannonballs, while Roquentin is soon talking about not the tree but its "qualities", which somehow "flow" from the tree.

just look at the tree. that's what I say. Or the meatballs.

I may well have misinterpreted Hochschild. Please let me know what you think.

“Just look” is fair enough. I’ll have a look.

I trimmed down my first reply a lot, Steve, so important points got omitted. I'm not against finding meaning in photos, for example, and Hochschild is good about the obstacles to the discovery of meaning. What I don't like are the ideas that every photo must have a meaning and that you can only understand a photo by converting it into text. In "Understanding a Photo" (the essay), for example, John Berger never mentions visual characteristics as important in evaluating a photo. Instead you're supposed to apply his souped-up version of Hemingway's iceberg theory. So photos are no different from literature. Hemingway. of course, never said iceberg theory was an evaluative citerion, or the only criterion, but for Berger it is.

I think I've wandered off the track here.

Well, I could be wrong. I have yet to win the Nobel Prize for Photography. If you get the time please let me know your opinion of Hochschild, here or in a message. Thanks.

with a smile > greeat discussion