This paper is a shorter version of a paper with the same title published in a different journal: Critical Inquiry, vol. 11 (1984), pp. 246-277 (on JSTOR). You might be interested in looking at the longer version even if you don’t have time to read it since it includes illustrations.

• Walton begins with the idea that photography is more realistic than painting. Notice that the sense of “realism” in which he accepts this is different from the sense people usually have in mind when they describe one sort of painting as more realistic than another. This special sense is associated with the idea that photographs are “transparent,” that we see the world through them. Be sure to think what he means by this.

• Part of understanding this is seeing how he takes paintings to be different. Walton says a couple of things that are designed to explain that.

• One is his discussion of the sort of “counterfactual dependence” to be found in the two cases (i.e., how the picture would be different if what it depicts had been different); see pp. 68-69.

• Another is the way make-believe works in the two cases. While with a painting it is fictional that you see something, in a photograph you actually see it but it may be fictional that you see it in a certain way—e.g., directly (see pp. 69-70).

Notice also his discussion (on p. 69) of the idea of being transparent in some respects and opaque in others.

• Walton concludes with an extended discussion of differences from verbal description and of the idea of similarity. One test of understanding him here is being able to make sense of his suggestion (p. 72) that in a certain sort of case a verbal description might be transparent.