Dr. Martineau added, as a footnote to the course outline, that we will, in a future lecture, discuss the significance of photographs. I was looking at family pictures my mom recently developed from my cousin George's wedding. I enjoy looking at pictures; perhaps the introductory class to photography from high school piped up my interest. I must admit, most of the pictures from the wedding turned out quite well (except the ones with inadequate lighting) which, to a degree, is thrilling to say the least because both my dad and my brother abhor taking pictures. In Stuart Hall's piece, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, Hall uses Juan Cotan's Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber as example to demonstrate not to take pictures at face value. (He suggests Cotan's piece signifies.) I immediately thought about the wedding pictures: Sure, my family beamed in the photographs, but did this really reflect the situation at the time?

Another example of reality versus photographs is found in Denise Chong's The Concubine's Children. When Hing (Winnie) is born to May-ying, May-ying and her newborn pose for a mother-daughter portrait in which each of them is dressed in formal and elegant attire when in actuality, May-ying is supporting the family on a waitress's salary. I can find examples of this in pictures of when my parents were young. Neither family was tremendously well off, yet family portraits have all sons and daughters lined up in linear order from first to last born-women prim and men starched. Perhaps family portraits serve as a window, in the eyes of others, to the stature of the family. It could be that representations in photographs no longer hold the same weight in importance. A photograph is really only a snapshot in one moment in time.