Titles (Jaeda's Artists' Cafe 11/28/99)

Simone in Brooklyn

Maybe the model was named Simone, and maybe the picture was made in Brooklyn. When I was a kid any girl named "Simone" was French and fast, and Brooklyn had a reputation for making tough guys.

My photographs are usually filenamed for the model, then numbered somewhat sequentially. It lets me keep them straight and I can usually find them without too much bouncing around. That's how I refer to them, as the filename, when posting or sending them.

There don't seem to be any conventions for naming, as pieces are sometimes numbered, sometimes named, and sometimes untitled. It doesn't seem like a good idea to try to attach some meaning to a picture, that has none intended, by giving it a provocative title. Unless the piece itself is so weak it needs something to show the viewer which way to go. (There is a counterexample in Ogden Nash's "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker," poem, the title of which is several times longer than the poem itself, and has completely slipped my little peabrain.)

I guess there's a tie-in here with art having meaning independent of the artist, and the artists' roles in preventing that, by assigning meaning with titles. Maybe.

Any comments? Do you use titles? Why?

(Simone was photographed in her hometown of Brooklyn, NY.)

-Don