John Berger's Essay 'Another Way Of Telling'

In John Berger's essay "Another Way of Telling," Berger argues that photographs contain a "third meaning." Berger claims that the third meaning is personal and relies almost completely on the individual viewer. As a result, no photograph can convey the same message to any two people and no two photographs can convey the same message to any one person. Here, the validity of Berger's assumption crumbles. All photographs communicate one absolute truth. Berger states, "All subjectivity is treated as private" (100). Yet, claiming that anything subjective within a photograph, its past and future, is personal only supports an absolute truth. The truth, however, is beyond the viewer's conscious interpretation and the photograph becomes ambiguous. Berger becomes mislead when he compares an individual's opinion of the past or future of a photograph to the actual
To analyze this further, what does a picture of a door relate, even if "ambiguous"? It is hard to create a meaning for a door, similar to a landscape. The reason being, the door is not ambiguous, the truth is unclouded. What does the photograph of a crying man convey? The image speaks the same truth, only details within the photograph disguise the truth allowing Berger to create a personal meaning. The crying man and the door both convey one truth, that of their existence and of the existence of life. Berger says that all photographs tell the past. The past is life and everything included in life, a singular truth. Life and existence vary greatly and photographs vary accordingly, but simultaneously they communicate one truth. Solid and real, the truth communicated cannot be debated. Crying men coexist with doors and their permanence may be captured on film; this is unambiguous and photographs of a single order of truth