As discussed in Chapter 2 of Practices of Looking, the producer of an image and the viewer that engages it is of the utmost importance when it comes to dissecting an image. In my way of understanding the reading, for one, the producer creates meaning through the image by applying certain codes and conventions that viewer will interpret in their own way. And then secondly, it is also important in which that image is exhibited. In this photograph, I can say as a viewer that it does not and will not speak to me in the same way that it will another person. To me the producer intended for the subjects of the photograph, an elderly black female and a white infant, to juxtapose one another, and this interpellated me to see this image on a level of social equality. The lighting in the photograph is very white-washed, and the female of the photo is in stark contrast to this. Not only that, but the white infant that she is holding in her hands contrasts her dark skin, making this picture seem more unnatural for me. So essentially I see two levels of meaning: one in which the world this female is set in, and two, the situation of holding this infant. Both meanings imply a certain innocence to me, as well as a depth of understanding that color does not matter. The producer of the image created it in black and white, and thus as a viewer, I see it in terms of black and white---there is no gray in between. In the chapter, they discuss how aesthetic judgement about what we consider naturally is in fact culturally determined. And I see this photograph as a breakthrough not only in a social culture for people of different races, but it also speaks to our day and age where race and gender are all considered equal.
