Photography and Ontology

Watch this video
http://vimeo.com/12302777

"Photography and Ontology" By Blake Stimson, Professor of Art History at University of California, Davis

"Photography has two distinctly appealing properties. On the one had, it has mechanically-enhanced artistic powers: it can capture a moment, or orchestrate an intricate arrangement, or populate an empty frame with the blink of an eye. We might call this its vertical or qualitative axis, and plot any given photograph according to its degree of artistic success according to whatever criteria we might choose--exhibitions, say, or reviews, or individual judgment of its mastery. On the other hand, photography has mechanically and electronically-accelerated powers of distribution like computers and promises something like a factory in every pocket or handbag. We might refer to this as its horizontal, or quantitative axis, plotting the spread of photographicization by the picture, say, or camera, or megapixel, or ISO sensitivity. Both of these properties makes its own claim to universality, to ontology, to the meaning of being, one idealist, the other materialist, one metaphorical, the other metonymical. Because of its uniquely ingrained connection with art and its broad appeal as non-art, photography's ontology is defined to an exceptional extent by a dynamic tension between the one and the all. This presentation will explore some of the sociopolitical effects and opportunities arising from that distinctive tension."

Philosophy goes to the movies

Philosophy goes to the movies
Christopher falzon , 2007 , routledge
(Many interesting chapters using examples of films to illustrate philosophical inquiry)

Introduction
   Philosophy + film
- the book is founded on the idea that films represent a collective visual memory, vast repository of images which many ideas and arguments can be discussed.
- within philosophy there is a degree of prejudice against the visual image p3
- it is thought that images are concrete and particular, whereas philosophy is concerned with the abstract and the universal.
- thank you plato for this… The myth of the cave… Even worse the modern cinema is very much like his cave, dark + transfixed by images removed from the real world.
- seems cinema is the opposite of philosophy… However, plato himself instills a striking image into his philosophical discourse. Thus, it is a pathway to understanding… (Reminds me of wynn bullock)  p6
- philosophy is full of arresting images and imaginative visions to illustrate and clarify positions

-  calling into question the perception that philosophy is remote from everyday existence, concerned only with abstraction and universalisation. P5
- second possible concern, from the pov of film, do we run the risk of distorting films and treating them as examples for philosophy (i think they can be used for many things)

- the idea of film as philosophy… Two points.
1. Whatever philosophical themes and content going on, it is only part of it.
2. The extent which films can be used to illustrate and shed light on philosophical themes and positions.

The philosophical approach
- what is philosophy’s subject area? It is so vast.
- jay Rosenberg “philosophy is a second order discipline” . It is a form of reflection in which we try to think about, clarify, and critically evaluate the most basic terms within which we think and act. P11

Overview of the book
- starting point in each chapter is ancient greek philosophy… Roughly historical order.
- philosophy of mind may be very relevant to what i need to research (functionalism etc if i remember correctly)
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(Just a thought, ontology of the photographer… Well even though the other half of my understanding is the interpreter… Could he even be a photographer? The witness? He is making pictures in his head, we all are!!!! Everyone is a photographer, we all make images, we all reference examples in the world to make our points,..)
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Star trek clips… Such as the transporter accident… Riker being tom and riker two identities!
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Wynn Bullock Quote

"As human beings we have a fundamental choice: we can either search for meaning within the realm of what appears to be real, or we can challenge the limits of that reality by asking if there might not be something more."

Things to discuss with Andrew...

An understanding if a lot of material that I have read… Reminder to self that I am just posing questions and not the answers yet. If there are answers at all.

The format for the assignment to take? Pictures I can use of other photographers, ATM thinking I’m just using my own… Etc…

The thoughts about ‘ontology of the photographer’ seems slightly paradoxical, of course he exists, or does he, what of the times where a photographer/artist was invented?.?

ontology / Heidegger

ontology = 
Theory of being as such. It was originally called “first philosophy” by Aristotle. In the 18th century Christian Wolff contrasted ontology, or general metaphysics, with special metaphysical theories of souls, bodies, or God, claiming that ontology could be a deductive discipline revealing the essences of things. This view was later strongly criticized by David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Ontology was revived in the early 20th century by practitioners of phenomenology and existentialism, notably Edmund Husserl and his student Martin Heidegger. In the English-speaking world, interest in ontology was renewed in the mid-20th century by W.V.O. Quine; by the end of the century it had become a central discipline of analytic philosophy. See also idealism; realism; universal.

Heidegger =
In 1927 he published his magnum opus, Being and Time. It strongly influenced Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialists, and, despite Heidegger’s protestations, he was classed as the leading atheistic existentialist.
His declared purpose in the work was to raise anew the question of the meaning of being. His preliminary analysis of human existence (Dasein, or “being-there”) employed the method of phenomenology.
In the early 1930s his thought underwent a Kehre (“turning around”), which some have seen as an abandonment of the problem of Being and Time. Then the whole Nazi thing…
Phenomenology restricts the philosopher’s attention to the pure data of consciousness, uncontaminated by metaphysical theories or scientific assumptions. Husserl’s concept of the life-world—as the individual’s personal world as directly experienced—expressed this same idea of immediacy

incompatible with metaphysics!?
I'm starting to like the notion of the 'being' 

Which Philosopher are you?

Your Result: W.v.O. Quine / Late Wittgenstein

60%
There is no provable absolute truth. The way you see things is dependant on your language. Truths exist only within a language, and change as the language does. —This quiz was made by S. A-Lerer.

58%
Plato (strict rationalists)

50%
Aristotle
48%
Nietzsche
42%
Immanuel Kant
40%
Sartre/Camus (late existentialists)
34%
Early Wittgenstein / Positivists

To look at: Fred Ritchin

Fred Ritchin - bending the frame

Recap: Assignment 1

Remember 
that this assignment and film is an inquiry into the questions and problems I can see with my dissertation and opens up possible avenues to explore…. Questions, I am not seeking answers at this point, I am seeking points to explore.

Batchen

To research... ASAP
(sourced from guest lecturer)

Batchen in camera Lucida: p133 + p139
‘He is dead and he is going to die’
Future anterior tense
Andre bazin - the ontology of the image
Interesting stuff!!!

The next step...

The next steps... 

 

The problems lie in the:
1. Photographer / author
2. Interpreter / seer / audience

Investigate metaphysical implications… My initial premise focused on the sociological formation of indented and excluded the philosophical nature of identity over time (self-portrait) (emergence)

Possible worlds: created when choosing one photograph over another, it represents an event.

Intentional + affective fallacy

Amalgamation of myself: Foucault shopping list, expand more on the notion of what is an author?
The concept of time… A paradox.

Is a self portrait even art? (Institutional theory) more Kant.

Representation

The self - souls, identity… Memory (Kant equivalence)

Reasoning - making depictions (interpretation) judgements

Free will - determinism causation, Kant again, clockwork

- Laura mulvey, death 24x a second, stillness and the moving image
- damian sutton, photography cinema memory - the crystal image of time
- David green + Joanna Lowry stillness and tim: photography and the moving image … Issuu.com
- deleuze continental philosophy, cinema 1 cinema 2 (identity and difference)
- contemporary science and time: object orientated ontology [ooo]
- philosophy goes to the movies
- Wynn bullock

Kant on time in the system
Heidegger towards death
Create a manifesto?

Ontology of the photographer… *****
(A lot of these things seem to do with the nature and existence of the photographer)

PH4024 - Kant on Beauty...

4 categories of aesthetic experience
- The Agreeable
- The Good
- Beauty
- The sublime.
His ideas have been very influential

The Critique of Judgement

When a man judges beauty he judges not just for himself but for all men… unlike subjective tastes “this olive is delicious” well that could be different to many people… the olive being beautiful however? Would be a more objective thing, we would of thought.. or is it…
- Beauty is a subjective experience in someones mind, just like taste.
- However, we do not care if the beautiful thing is real or not [contestable] the physical object exists does it not
- IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS
    The agreeable is what GRATIFIES a man; the beautiful what simply PLEASES him; the good what is ESTEEMED (approved), i.e., that on which he sets an objective worth.
- agreeable, linked to some desire like hunger or lust
- Something is good, linked to our moral judgement
- Beauty is free of these ties… more PURE, we are disinterested in the object itself.
We feel beauty immediately upon witnessing it

No conditions by logic can be placed upon the object… It’s beauty must be inherent to it and self-inherent.
- A sense of beauty must be universal.

When i pronounce something to be beautiful, I am not saying so for myself, but as something that is beautiful to everybody.

PROBLEMS: emotions and feelings can get in the way and bring impurity to ‘beauty’ …. But we can’t remove yourself from our feelings…
When we experience a beautiful object, it can only be beautiful as a complete thing its totality of form. Must be beautiful in itself, without thought to an end…. eg a car. without thought of how it drives
Beauty can be sensed by all of us, without need for communication. Its universal… But emotion and experience can deepen the beauty we feel…

The Intentional Fallacy

Influential critical theory - 20th century

    Interpretation of a work should focus purely on its objective qualities, we should diregard ALL external/extrinsic factors (biographical, historical) concerning the author.
The MISTAKE of judging the value/meaning of a work by factors such as these is called the intentional fallacy.
"one doesn’t need to know the artist’s private intentions. The work tells all." - Susan Sontag
…originally, Literary criticism.

The Affective Fallacy
- in appreciating a work of art, we can expect that different audiences will respond in different ways + form different opinions.
- We expect each interpret to form their own interpretation (a different meaning on the world)
- All these can’t be supported by the artists intention, so the intentional fallacy seems plausible.
- “The mistake of confusing the impact that a work might have on its audience with its meaning - the affective fallacy”

YouTube is lacking...

Ideal, informative + VISUAL discussions of various philosophers and their theories…. thank goodness for three minute philosophy videos, they ARE interesting but only bitesize chunks as an verview…

What is Art?

 ---> sourced from 50 philosophy questions book.

The battle between the artist + the critic.
"The conflict is timeless and beyond resolution because it is motivated by a fundamental disagreement on the most basic of questions: What is Art?"
Representation - - - - - - - - - Abstraction
John Ruskin + James McNeill Whistler
- they disagree on the nature of aesthetic value.
- Greeks (Plato) Art is a representation/mirror of nature. Plato regarded works of art as a poor reflection/imitation of truth.
- Aristotle shared these view, but, more sympathetic view of its objects, they’re a completion of what was only partially realised in nature, insight into the universal essence of things.
The eye of the beholder
- Is beauty inherently in the objects it is ascribed to?
- realist vs anti-realist views.
- support: Kant’s universal validity: aesthetic judgements are based purely on our subjective responses and feelings; but so ingrained in human nature that they are universally valid… “any properly constituted human can share them”
The Institutional Theory
- widely discussed since 1970s…
- Works of art have that status by virtue, bestowed upon them by authorised members of the art world.
- Difficulties… influential, but uninformative, we want to know WHY.
Formalist approach to art in 20th century.
- line, colour _ other formal qualities were considered paramount.
- Form was elevated over content
- Paved the way for Abstractionism
- Another influential departure from representation: expressionism… Expressions of the artist’s subjective emotion and experience were regarded as the hallmark of true works of art.
Family Resemblance
- As with many of Socratic Dialogues, a question is posed to be defined… The problem is a lot of things we seem to know what they are but are unable to define it.
- ONE WAY OUT… Wittgenstein: family resemblance. “games” we can easily give examples of games, but trouble arises when we try and find a definition that encompasses every instance. NO COMMON DENOMINATOR.

- so for art, pieces might have much in common with other pieces, but if we look for features they all possess, we will search in vain.
"any attempt to define art is misconceived and doomed to failure"

Free Will.

Think - Simon Blackburn
Chapter 3 - Free Will

The Bonds of fate
- We regard ourselves as free agents
- We appear to be conscious about our freedom
- Freedom brings responsibility, and those who abuse it, blame and punishment
- moral reaction imposed because ‘we could have done otherwise’
- Could this consciousness be an illusion?
- Lucretius - past controls the present + future, can’t control the past + its control over the present + future. Therefore, can’t control the future.
- DETERMINISM
- If we accept this argument, we are HARD DETERMINISTS, they think freedom + determinism are incompatible.
- Deny this? Quantum physics give some hope, as they appear random… we don’t like randomness…
- If determinism holds, we lose freedom + responsibility.
If determinism does not hold, but some events ‘just happen’, and then, equally, we lose freedom and responsibility.

Fig trees and waterfalls
 - Schopenhauer waterfalls, causal steps for water to boil, waves… - similar Wittgenstein… Autumn leaf - criticise an argument, cannot be conscious of something’s absence, e.g when I speak, I am not conscious of the causal structures that make it possible to speak. - mind-body dualism - introduces the controlling soul. - how do we understand the freedom of the soul??? - entire problem of mind-brain interaction Pulling yourself together - compatabalism -according to Kant, he dismissed it as it only gives us the freedom of clockwork. Puppets and Martians -

Inspiration

Reasoning.

Think - Simon Blackburn
Chapter 6 - reasoning

Formal logic, inductive reasoning, elements of scientific reasoning

A little logic
- working parts of an argument are it’s ‘premises’ (what is accepted or assumed)
- from these ‘premises’ we can derive a conclusion
- if we don’t accept the conclusion we have two options:
1. Reject some premises (untrue)
2. Reject the way the conclusion is drawn from the premises. (Invalid reasoning)
- logic is interested in whether arguments are valid
- Aristotle, form of an argument:
Modus ponens
P;
If p then q;
So, q.
- there is no way our conclusion could be false if the premises are true.

Plausible Reasonings
- we expand beliefs on a daily basis… Our pragmatic approach goes under ‘plausible’ or ‘reasonable’
- Open to the world of POSSIBILITES
- Hume points out the problem: all our experience is from the past and the present so if we are to make assumptions about the future then these are inferences. All based on past experience and could be wrong, but then, this is all we have isn’t it? The Sun has risen every day for all humanity but doesn’t follow that it will rise tomorrow, it is a belief
Hume: THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION

The Lottery For The Golden Harp
- arguments from experience rely upon resemblence, that the future will be like the past.. UNIFORMITY OF NATURE

Chancy Stuff
- 1/1000 people will have the disease
- test is 99% accurate
- however if have the disease the chance of having it will be 1/11

Problem: Identity Crisis

Disorders / Memory
Consciousness and memory issues

Science side and the philosophical/artistic side

- not recognising own features (one of the signs of self awareness) Alan Turing machine relevant here?

The Self.

Think - Simon Blackburn
Chapter 4 - the self

- Descartes salvaged the self out of universal doubt
- lichtenberg queried this…

An immortal soul?
- there are actual things we think about ourselves (once small, will age) and possible things we think about (might have been born with different mind and body, might live again)
- the first list is compatible with a straightforward view of who I am… The second list implies I am something mysterious, that my soul could endure through a lot of changes.
- Hume observes the self is elusive and unobservable, inside your own mind all you will discover is perceptions, experiences and emotions.
[ o ] room (contents of mind), can never see the house (mind) and can never really see other peoples houses if all the windows are closed…
- Thomas Reid states the ‘I’ is simple, the self is not composite. Things that cannot change and decay are not composite, therefore neither can the soul.

oak trees and ships
- Locke’s observation on Vegetables + plants:
- plants can change all of their cells/atoms, but this doesn’t matter, just as long as this ‘unity of function' is maintained.
- This explains how a human being is said to be the same throughout all stages of ones life.
- ship of Theseus, planks changed, still the same ship? What if someone had been picking up the planks all the while… Would there be two ships? Identical? How is that possible, a clone?

Souls and Elastic Balls- invoke an ‘immaterial substance’
- Locke points out that if we’re worried about personal survival through time, ‘immaterial soul substances’ won’t help, we don’t make reference to it.
- Kant, ‘representations’ are things like experiences or thoughts contents of the mind. Simply, we don’t know anything about immaterial substances. It could be continually replaced. (elastic ball example)
- Nothing of our notion of ‘self’ gives us a permanent inner substance which can survive (to be immortal)

The Brave Officer
- Locke, person A + person B are the same if A remembers what B thought, felt and acted…- rules out that I am Cleopatra, reincarnated
- similarly I can be sure I will not live another life as a dog, a dog couldn’t have that kind of mental capacity.
- “Memory wipeout destroys personal identity”
HOWEVER, consequences…
- I cannot survive complete Amnesia
- Also, problems with partial amnesia… following on from Locke’s theory, what if I committed a crime, then retained no memory of the event? I am the same human being, but a different person.
- “it seems that the one human being is inhabited by multiple successive personalities, as memories come and go.”
- Thomas Reids version of the problem: brave officer objection, in the end the officer, now general, is and is not at the same time the boy who was flogged as a boy…
- Locke’s simple reply: same person goes along with same human being… or it does not. He needs notions of the same person in order to justify claims of responsibility.
- Courts don’t work that way… Amnesia is far too easy to claim. But in God’s eyes, real amnesia does.
- Reids argument that A = B, B= C then A = C only if each A B C are simple, and not composite… Locke didn’t think this.

The Self as a Bundle
- bundle theory of the self, Hume, mind containing an aggregate of perceptions/experiences together with whatever connects them.
- hume: we are never aware of a self
- Perhaps the way forward is to deny that the ‘self’ is something we can be aware of…. this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, however.
- Wittgenstein, talks of cases where we are subjects of experience “i hear the rain” “i have a toothache”. Cannot mistake the subject for someone else, I can’t call out in pain for someone else.
-   I only refers to the body…’mind’ HAS meaning…
- “Try thinking of self-consciousness some other way…”
The Self as an organising principle
- problem of Artificial Intelligence…
- self-interpretation is necessary for any kind of interpretation of experience
- “The ‘I’ is the point of view from which interpretation starts”
- A point of view is always needed: to represent a scene to yourself is to represent yourself as experiencing it one way or another.

Delusions of Imagination
- This line of thinking is due to Kant.
- I can abstract out of myself, i have transported the mysterious soul
- Suppose I am not transporting anything, but I am representing to myself what it would be like to see the world from a different point of view, at a different time.
- Kants line of thought: there is an equivalence between ‘I can imagine seeing X’ and ‘I can imagine myself seeing X’ … illustrated by me thinking of something such as Genghis Khan, my soul does not transport to him.
- Does this prove that such imaginings such as life after death are illusions?

Scrambling the Soul
- ‘curious’ difference between the past and the future when we think of ourselves.
- suppose we lived in a world where we can assemble bodies and brains like computers… suppose tomorrow you would go to get an upgrade and you had a choice between person A, artic and person B, tropics… you COULD be either person… reminiscent to David Lewis, there is a fork in the road. It is never half and half, I am either on one place, or the other… or neither.- religion affects the people on this subject…

Dissertation overview

Title: to what degree can a self portrait be taken to be an accurate representation of whom it represents, given the inherent bias? 

Intro -
Chapter 1 - self-portrait, identity + representation
Chapter 2 - Vincent Van Gogh
Chapter 3 - the conscious
Chapter 4 - the unconscious
Chapter 5 - the death of the author
Chapter 6 - the wisdom of crowds
Conclusion -

Refer to written notes for details.

Tutorial with Andrew #1

Laura Mulvey’s last book on cinema which is interesting (called death at 24 frames a second)

David Green and Joanna Lowry called ‘Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image’.

The classic/key text of continental philosophy on cinema is Deleuze’s book ‘Cinema 1’ and ‘Cinema 2’

Contemporary science and time - people working on object orientated ontology - some of those people have been using some very advanced models from maths to come up with some curious accounts of metaphysics.

3 year preliminary MA plan

Long term goal: graduate with a published book
Possible title: What is ‘I’?
Launch pad:
1. Dissertation
2. Self-portrait project
3. Past projects such as ‘amalgamation of myself’
4. Future MA modules
Themes explored:
metaphysics. (Philosophy aspects) further exploration of loose ends in dissertation. Identity. Identity over time, representation, possible worlds, the concept of time. Emergence theory… The self  (Refine)
Next steps:
Re-read dissertation + pick out threads to explore/develop
Use ph4024 assignment 1 to pose an introduction to what has been explored and an inquiry into problems still existing and what remains…

PH4023 - wk2 Tom Gunning

Tom Gunning
“What’s the Point of an Index? Or Faking Photographs” Still/Moving: between Cinema and Photography ed. Karen Beckman and Jean Ma  (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008) pp. 23- 40.


The Man.

- Looks a bit like WeiWei
- Professor of Art History, Committee on Cinema and Media Studies, and the College
- Current research on the relation between early cinema and the experience of modernity.
- 

Essay Summary + points

It is a criticism of the indexical... he will go on to argue that it is a semiotic term that doesn't quite explain account  fascination of a photograph... or give an accurate account for our experience of them interpretation

Charles Peirce's indexicality - the physical relationship between the object photographed and the resulting image. (knowledge of HOW it was made? can't explain the fascination)
Rhetoric - the art of discourse
Iconicity - 
The Truth Claim - derived from indexicality, to describe the prevalent belief that traditional photographs accurately depict reality. He states that the truth claim relies upon both the indexicality and visual accuracy of photographs


- Excited and concerned about emerging new media...
- Particular worry is that older media is looked upon as flawed that new media will suceed
- 1 of Largest problems first... the truth claim of traditional photography. (identified with charles Peirce's indexicality) He will investigate both.
- First he will look at the issue that The digital and indexical are opposed terms.
    So, there is a difference in how an image is made, light sensitive emulsion VS. data encoded in a matrix on numbers.
- How does this challenge indexicality?
- They both capture information but the difference is in how it is captured.
- This has implications for -stored -transferred -manipulated.
- Storage seems fine, (numerical data) digital images can be kept as passport photo's.
- "foolish to identify the indexical with the photographic; most indexical infomation is not recorded by photography" signs are not recorded by photography? They are culturally given like in the next reading?

Pierce Trichotomy of signs
icon - likeness, doesn't have to be connected
index - a sign that is linked by an actual connection... such as an action
symbol - like most language, no relation... horse has no relation to the actual horse itself, just words, sound (unlike onomatopoeia)

- iconicity doesn't undermine its indexical properties
- An index need not resemble the thing is represents

So, both digital + analogue have indexical properties determined by objects outside of the camera... so no difference!

If one considers a photograph a direct imprint of reality, cutting out the intermediary states...
which brings forth that digital images can be manipulated in ways photographs cannot.
- He suggests that both CAN still be manipulated in many ways and so the indexical can be ignored or undone.
- returns to digital and points out 'visual accuracy + reconisability' of the edited image... (is this not the same as an icon?
- evaluating a photo as accurate, depends on indexicality + recognition of it + its subject
- painting freedom
-power in recognising them as manipulated photogaphs

p27 which tackles truth claim (indexicality + visual accuacy)
truth claim knocked by paranoid position (photos as evidence for non existence( or schizo position) release from truth
- immediately adds it is a lot about interpretion
- the photograph is used as evidence
- photo can only tell the truth if it can tell a lie (simple logic which i like) truth claim lurks behind a lie claim
- the truth implies the possibility of lying and vice versa

Introduction of FAKING PHOTOGRAPHY

- kind of proves his own point, if a photograph can be faked, lied. then it is fair to say that the photograph has a truth claim to it, doesn't deny it, it demonstrates it (top p29)
- going back to using it as evidence, strict codes and law are put into place to determine the accuracy of a photograph

- photographs used as science evidence, too much data, intertwined indexical + iconic aspects
- eg Marey, element of time, more abstract... digital manipulator?... couldnt remove the indexical relation to the subject however...

NOW, seems to talk of some of the benefits of manipulation
- not faking photographs but more creative, play and imagination... Art photography.

Finally, IF the truth claim was over completely overthrown, images couldn't be trusted... don't worry. The possibility of deception would also be abolished + counterfeiting would cease. They would lose their power.

p32 We come to a doubt in photography. approach it phenomenologically, not semiotically
phenomologically - of conscious experience
semiotically - (relating to signs, symbols)

Reason: believes best to grasp our drive behind digitalisation (he's concerned then) why its unlikely to disappear... and what it offers us, other visual representation can't

- we delight in digital manipulation... it is 'clever' but it is not a case of being fooled... mostly never, we are aware what a real image is, but we delight in the familiarity with accuracy and also the obvious distortion of the image.
     'potentially an accurate representation' =fun
     'Thus a sense of the photograph as reference remains inherent even while contadicted (or played with) in a manipulated image.

bottom p33 'a phenomonological FASCINATION with photography' the relation between image + pre existing reality
- indexicality is a semiotic term (from the trichotomy) less sure it provides proper (or sufficient) term for the experience....

Cultural knowledge shapes our perception of things! INTERPRETATION... things that shape how we interpret

Mentions Andre Bazin + Roland Barthes (complex way) (realist positions)
 Phenomenological framework has been laid by these two

So, in the remainder of the essay, WHY he thinks this tradition of interpretation us valuable, why it outruns an indexical account.

-pause, stop explaining the photograph + DESCRIBE it.
- it's features, never mistake for the real world!
- we don't approach it semiotically, but it is still clearly a sign for something
- They are more than signs.
- signs seem to reduce (their reference to a signification) somethig, photographs open up this complex world


"The photograph does make us imagine something else, something behind it, before it, somewhere in relation to it"
    Barthes 'photograph + referent adhere'

Barthes shares Bazin beleif, the photograph puts us in the presence of something, it possesses an ontology rather than a semiotics

"a magic not an art"

BOTH: photography contributes neither a copy, or substitute "it contributes something to the natural order of creation"

fascination due to uniquness + contingency as well (ptaining to future events)

FULL CIRCLE DISCUSSION
other media, relate strngly to artificial realitites

to touch on:
= richness of the detailed visual array of a photograph
= temporality, to refer to a point in time

TO END:
-this is only the beginings to describe fascination with photography
-index is not adequate or accurate enough a term
-barthes + bazin, a photograph exceeeeeeds the functions of a sign



Thoughts + problems + discussion

they are opposed terms in what sense? physical, corporeal?
why is truth claim a problem?

1 digital vs indexical are separate, doesnt like that... difference between them
2 returns to truth claim
3 truth, is interpreted, photo can be used as evidence (truth) .... subvert that, people will inevitably fake photos

PH4023 - wk1 John A. Walker - Context as a determinant of photographic meaning

Structure
- first reading thoughts + notes
- research + context
- second reading + thoughts
- [host] output 5min overview + formulate 2 questions that arise

John A. Walker
context as a determinant of photographic meaning (1980)
from: the camerawork essays (context + meaning in photography, 1997)

introduction

- prompted by a desire to clarify the role that context plays in changing the meaning of photographs
- 2 prior essays, structural analysis + iconographic analysis :s
- marked change from internal to external
- individuals, unique...... many meanings of an image. Seems to imply an image can have billions of meanings. Did this not render it meaningless?
- ignored that a concensus may be reached
I found myself, the wisdom of crowds owed itself very well to this notion

- clear some images are ambiguous, pschology duck/rabbit picture.
    [ the same signifier has two signified ]
- the number of meanings derived will not be enormous.

- reasons: ambiguity + complexity
     the variety of contexts
- reception theory deals with this death of the author + birth of the implied reader
- reception history, over time.
- through discussion we can learn about others thoughts and feelings regarding pictures

- remember famous example: Barthes, emotional impact of a family photograph

- this is a contribution to ' reception studies'

beginning of essay

- wedding photograph, can lend itself to be recontextualised in many contexts

- third effect. when (1) photograph is placed next to (2) photograph we link them together and make connections between them
- paintings used to denote specific geographical locations, moved and lost all spatial awareness

- media has influence over the way an image is read, eg surrounded by text (factual, supportive) or in a high art magazine, white border, it becomes a precious object.

circulation/currency.

 - meaning determined by spatio-temporal point of origin... a photograph has moved away in space and time...
idea, a graph exploring the dispersal of an image, an encoding which is evermore possible now with location at the touch of a button... to show the origins of an image, encoded, or something similar.
- photographs meaning seems to be viewed as eternally fixed...
- it is also subject to change however, because of this context
- NEED to examine the life of an image, as well as its birth (creation)
is it then possible to examine the death of an image? one which no longer exists and never will again? All that remains of this image then, is the writings that are left of it and the memorys we have. How like a book, an entire book to describe an image, a scene... but its death.
-photographs are like a currency, used to fulfill a purpose.

jo spence

- taken by Terry Demnett, displayed recently in feminist section
- transposes album photographs into the public realm.
- included unflattering photographs of herself
shares same topics as my own self portrait project, or perhaps as the project evolves and expands it is hard to not acquire new themes to attribute to the mass of imagery.
 - forces people to see her in a new way

- the gallery has deradicallised radical photography...

Mental context or set

- the beholder's share, a viewer approaches an image not a tabula rasa, but with rich and full experiences and memory's
- social factor's change perception. gender, class, age...

- analysis of people's experience of a photograph is much more difficult than analysing pictures... what does go on in other peoples heads?
- danger.... ideological individualism
 - media depends upon commonalities between people for communication.

-problematic to judge single image (we;re inundated with visual imagery daily)
- context of contemporary things... statue, different meanings. intended meaning vs established meanings (how like words)

context so troublesome, it lies outside the artists control
- film + audience, more advanced

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PH4023 - wk1 Roland Barthes - the death of the author

Structure
- first reading thoughts + notes
- research + context
- second reading + thoughts
- [host] output 5min overview + formulate 2 questions that arise

Roland Barthes [trans by Richard Howard]
The death of the author (1968)

- castrato disguised as a woman
- writer's pov, who is speaking this way?
- will always be impossible to know, all writing is itself in a special voice
- literature - "that trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes"

- voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins
- mediator X person
- the author is a modern figure prouduced by society: English empiricism, french rationalism, personal faith of the reformation ---> the prestige of the individual.

- literature is obsessed with the author, the indivudual.
      "his person, his history, his tastes, his passions"
I guess we live in a time where this makes sense, a man is a product of his time, so to understand the man one must understand the time in which he lived. Makes sense.

- baudelaire's work, failing of the man
- Van Gogh's work, his madness
- Tchaikovsky's work, his vice
- the xplanation of the work is always sought in the man who has produced it
Does this not suggest some powerful objectivity? That the writing be written upon stone, factual. Indeed it could be utter crap? who would care of the author? of his words? he may have written the words, would he have attached the meaning, or would we owe that favour to someone else after the work has been completed? ... Van Gogh's paintings had no real meaning..... UNTIL he died. Meaning was bestowed upon them AFTERWARDS....

Interesting point... creation of a work... meaning of the work... when do each of these aspects come into play???? DISCUSS!

- people have tried to topple the power of the author.
- to us it is language which speaks, not the author

- absence of the author transforms the text

- the author-god

- once the author is gone, claims to decipher a text become useless
there is no one meaning... There could be an infinity of meanings.
wont be open to criticism either?
-  the reign of the author was also that of the critics

- Balzac.
- greek tragedy
- the reader is now introduced
- the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author

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PH4023 - wk1 Andre Bazin - ontology of the photographic image

Structure
- first reading thoughts + notes
- research + context
- summary from second reading
- [host] output 5min overview + formulate 2 questions that arise

Andre Bazin (trans, Hugh Gray)
The ontology of the photographic image (1960)

- died 1958
- post WWII writings on cinema
- vol I based on ontological basis of cinema "the cinema as the art of reality"
- vol II relation between cinema + close arts (theater, novel, painting)
- vol III relation between cinema + society
- vol IV would have been Neorealism

To follow: chapter 1 of vol I.
- he was a film critic, informed clarity + perceptiveness

- suggestion that within the origins of sculpture + painting lies a mummy complex
- Ancient Egypt religion revolved around a ritual of death; survival depends upon the continual existence of the corporeal body after death.
- Death is the victory of time, provided man with a defense, psychological need, a comfort.
- Therefore, first Egyptian statue was a mummy 
- the preservation of life by the representation of life.

- similarity to prehistoric arrow shaped clay bears (successful hunt)
- evolution of art + civilisation (side x side) relieved the plastic arts of their magic
- Louis XIV was content to be survived by his portrait by Lebrun
- civilisation can't entirely efface our concern of time

- sociological perspective, explanation.
- the great spiritual + technological crisis that overtook painting middle of last century????
- cinema, the furthest evolution (so far) of plastic realism. (beginnings at the renaissance + baroque painting)

- painting has had a varied balance between the symbolic + realism.
- 15th Century, western painting began to turn from spiritual concerns, to a complete imitation of the outside world as possible.
- decisive moment: scientific discovery of the first mechanical system of reproduction, the camera obscura
- painting torn between 2 ambitions: aesthetic, spiritual reality, the symbol transcends the model AND psychological, (to duplicate the world outside)
- great artists have always been able to combine the two (ofc)
- however, faced with two essentially different phenomena.
- quarrel over realism in art (misunderstanding!) psychological + pseudorealism
- medieval art never passed through this crisis
- Why do people assume there is only 'one art form to rule them all' why can they not accept that there could be many?
- perspective was the original sin of western painting

- redeemed by Niepce + Lumiere
- photography freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness
- photography + cinema satisfy out obsession with realism
- painter ~ subjectivity, human hand casts doubt
- photography inferior to painting in the replication of colour
- conflict between style + likeness is a relatively modern phenomenon
- Chardin objectivity, not of that of the photographer
- 19th Century saw the real beginings of the crisis with Picasso, CENTRAL
- freed from the resemblance complex

- all art are dependent of man, only photography gains a benefit from his absence
- its production by automatic means has radically affected our psychology of the image.
- photography has power, proof something was there.
- perspective similar to family album, the cinema is objectivity in yimr.

- photography can surpass art in creative power.
- frame mesh wire w/ leaves 3d print ... leaves = pixel? wire cage fit together + sow
- photography is the most important event in he history of the plastic arts
- liberation + accomplishment, it freed western painting
- impressionist realism, opposite extreme
 - pascals condemnation

- other hand, cinema is also a language

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 research

- Andre died in 1958, aged 40, from leukemia 
- film critic and film theorist
- believed a film should represent a film makers vision
     important in the development of the auteur theory

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 summary
 
 - plastic arts (sculpture) + painting may lie a mummy complex
     [def] [art forms that involve modeling or molding, such as sculpture and ceramics, or art involving the representation of solid objects with three-dimensional effects.]
- To provide a defence against the inevitable onslaught of time
- preservation of the body after death (preservation of life by the representation of life)
- art + civilisation evolved together and took away this magical property, but not entirely.
- the image helps us remember the subject and preserve him from a second death
- now part of a larger concept, creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real
- is art not more psychology than aesthetics? Of mans need to have the last word... the story of resemblance, the story of realism.
- Andre Malraux [french novelist] describes cinema as the furthermost evolution of plastic realism
- art turning towards complete imitation of the outside world.
    heralded was the camera obscurer, a mechanical system of reproducing the world outside
- So now art, aesthetic and psychological, had achieved perspective, but not movement... something to suggest life in immobile works, Baroque art experimented with this.
-quarrel over realism in art stems from a misunderstanding, perspective was a sin of western painting...
- redeemed by Niepce + Lumiere
- Photography freed
- human intervention casts a shadow of doubt
- work without the creative intervention of man
-


- so, photography is superior to other mediums because of its capacity to capture reality, and by extension cinema is the furthest advance of this kind of realism.
- ironically photography seems to be getting less and less realistic as it has continued to evolve on its own. From being a genre that was intended to document and record reality it has become a means to subvert and create propaganda in the world with edited images and the results of Photoshop.


Simon Johnson, MA. Student :)
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk