Photography theory

[Roger Hicks]

Is calling something "drivel" necessarily the same as being glib?

I'd suggest not. Based on your knowledge/opinion of the person who makes that judgement, you can take their comment seriously or not. If not: well, it doesn't matter. If you know that you habitually disagree with them, that can be valuable in its own right: I have bought books on the strength of negative reviews by reviewers whose opinions I particularly disdain. If you know that you normally have some sympathy with the views of someone who dismisses Sontag's work: well, it could save you some time wading through... yes... drivel.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

Not a single person in this thread has taken Sontag to task over her arguments. If people think she's wrong, it's reasonable to ask: why? If we should be critical and think for ourselves, going "don't like it" is a poor response!

Thales, Plato and Sontag's Cave.

Reality, or humanities perception of reality is a slippery concept. For most of our history we never considered what was real and what was not. Thales of Miletus in the sixth century BC was the first to describe a reality without resorting to mythology. Later Plato's reality became a construction of many aspects of perceptions, sight, idea, see, shape, appearance among others that combined to become Form with Form being the underling and immutable aspect of reality. The Allegory of the Cave is to demonstrate that perception of reality and reality itself are not the same, and that is achieved by eventually removing a prisoner from the cave and exposing him to other forms of reality.

However in Sontag's cave we (and by we here I mean all of humanity) must stay within the cave for eternity. In effect for our reality to be determined by still photography it would need to be the entirety or at the very least the vast majority of our experience. I would contend that even today that is unlikely to be the case even for keen photographers, back in the pre-flickr nineteen-sixties I would have thought it almost impossible.

More likely is the idea that we each model reality in our own heads, any of you could draw a triangle on your desk as you read this but the true reality the Form of triangle is singular and in my head it forms part of my intellect part of my knowledge. That reality will not change regardless of how many triangles get drawn.

 

[Roger Hicks]

. . . anymore than putting cardboard wings on a pig makes it a pigeon.

Oink! I take exception to this!

Philosophy has many mansions. Some are welcoming, attractive and comfortable, and you can dwell in them all your days. Some, as soon as you are through their doors, will slit your throat and rob you. Some will re-phrase the bleeding obvious in high-faluting terms that are totally valid if you accept their definitions and eschew common sense. Topologically, for example, a pig with cardboard wings is identical to a pigeon.

Moral philosophy, a consideration of the good and why it is good, can be fascinating. Or it can be pretentious rubbish. Arguably, art "philosophy" is a division of moral philosophy.

Cheers,

R.

 

[rodinal]

Topologically, for example, a pig with cardboard wings is identical to a pigeon.

Topologically speaking, they are equivalent even without resorting to the cardboard...

 

[Roger Hicks]

Topologically speaking, they are equivalent even without resorting to the cardboard...

You are of course absolutely right. I stand corrected and abashed.

Cheers,

R

 

[Sparrow]

Thales, Plato and Sontag's Cave.

Reality, or humanities perception of reality is a slippery concept. For most of our history we never considered what was real and what was not. Thales of Miletus in the sixth century BC was the first to describe a reality without resorting to mythology. Later Plato's reality became a construction of many aspects of perceptions, sight, idea, see, shape, appearance among others that combined to become Form with Form being the underling and immutable aspect of reality. The Allegory of the Cave is to demonstrate that perception of reality and reality itself are not the same, and that is achieved by eventually removing a prisoner from the cave and exposing him to other forms of reality.

However in Sontag's cave we (and by we here I mean all of humanity) must stay within the cave for eternity. In effect for our reality to be determined by still photography it would need to be the entirety or at the very least the vast majority of our experience. I would contend that even today that is unlikely to be the case even for keen photographers, back in the pre-flickr nineteen-sixties I would have thought it almost impossible.

More likely is the idea that we each model reality in our own heads, any of you could draw a triangle on your desk as you read this but the true reality the Form of triangle is singular and in my head it forms part of my intellect part of my knowledge. That reality will not change regardless of how many triangles get drawn.

Moving on to the twentieth century, if we apply Plato's reality to a modern era it holds up quite well ... if we consider the concept of 'Camera' we can easily form a mental reality of camera, but in that camera-reality it is nonspecific and nonjudgmental it's not 'a camera' it is the concept, the reality of 'camera'.

The same applies to 'car' or 'van' or 'truck' we can form a reality of each and we can separate each from the other without difficulty. Each of those realities, those forms are free from any value judgments without more information. To form a specific view we need to add 'sports' or 'armoured' or 'cable' to the generic car, it needs many aspects of perceptions combined to move away from the abstract.

So moving to the work itself, Photography, is the Photograph a different to other generic-reality? does it carry some moral or ethical value in addition to its reality? ... well no it clearly cannot. The photograph needs more information to become good or evil, appropriate, boring, reactionary or anything else ... a photograph is morally neutral.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

a photograph is morally neutral.

I can see situations where it is not.

Take propaganda, for instance. A photograph of dead nuns is neutral but what if the "nuns" are not dead but acting for the camera, in order to assist in the making of propaganda? The picture then, it seems to me, conveys a reality that does not exist and is far from neutral.

It's the metadata that defines the information in a photograph; who took it, where, when, how and why. The old saw about a picture being worth a thousand words may be true, but is it not the case that the thousand words may not be honest words?

 

[RichC]

And don't forget that, because of its nature, a photograph inherits qualities from the subject it depicts, which include moral and ethical values. A photograph is tangibly related to its subject; it's connected to a past reality.

In fact, what Sejanus.Aelianus says above is precisely what Sontag got all hot and bothered about in "On Photography"...

How we interpret what a photograph shows us - well, that's when Plato's Cave comes into its own. The photograph acts as a mirror reflecting reality (albeit one that's a bit murky), so the prisoners in Plato's Cave see the same reality: the subject of the photograph and the photographic image itself. (This is but one way to see a photograph - a photograph is much more than a mere "mirror with a memory", a phrase coined by the Victorian photographer Oliver Wendell Holmes at the birth of photography.)

 

[Sparrow]

I can see situations where it is not.

Take propaganda, for instance. A photograph of dead nuns is neutral but what if the "nuns" are not dead but acting for the camera, in order to assist in the making of propaganda? The picture then, it seems to me, conveys a reality that does not exist and is far from neutral.

It's the metadata that defines the information in a photograph; who took it, where, when, how and why. The old saw about a picture being worth a thousand words may be true, but is it not the case that the thousand words may not be honest words?

.. yes Ms Sontag addressis that exact point in an other essay (the title of which my brain has neglected to retain) with regard to Geoff Wall's Dead Troops Talk

I'll take questions at the end if that's OK 🙂

And don't forget that, because of its nature, a photograph inherits qualities from the subject it depicts, which include moral and ethical values. A photograph is tangibly related to its subject; it's connected to a past reality.

In fact, what Sejanus.Aelianus says above is precisely what Sontag got all hot and bothered about in "On Photography"...

How we interpret what a photograph shows us - well, that's when Plato's Cave comes into its own. The photograph acts as a mirror reflecting reality (albeit one that's a bit murky), so the prisoners in Plato's Cave see the same reality: the subject of the photograph and the photographic image itself. (This is but one way to see a photograph - a photograph is much more than a mere "mirror with a memory", a phrase coined by the Victorian photographer Oliver Wendell Holmes at the birth of photography.)

I would insist that 'reality' is an additive construction that the prisoners of Plato's cave would form a different concept of reality when they had heard what the one Plato had removed had to say when he was put back in the cave in the Socrateian version ... and anyway the content is not intrinsic to the photograph the content could be contained within any media, no?

... and anyway condemning photography for Abu Ghraib is like blaming Caxton for the Narnia books

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

In fact, what Sejanus.Aelianus says above is precisely what Sontag got all hot and bothered about in "On Photography"...

OMG! 😱

I've agreed with Miss Sunday???

I'm off to London and find a big red bus to throw myself under. 😉

 

[RichC]

...... <grin>

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

and anyway condemning photography for Abu Ghraib is like blaming Caxton for the Narnia books

Sadly enough, there are people whose world view allows them to do just that.

 

[Sparrow]

Thales, Plato and Sontag's Cave.

Reality, or humanities perception of reality is a slippery concept. For most of our history we never considered what was real and what was not. Thales of Miletus in the sixth century BC was the first to describe a reality without resorting to mythology. Later Plato's reality became a construction of many aspects of perceptions, sight, idea, see, shape, appearance among others that combined to become Form with Form being the underling and immutable aspect of reality. The Allegory of the Cave is to demonstrate that perception of reality and reality itself are not the same, and that is achieved by eventually removing a prisoner from the cave and exposing him to other forms of reality.

However in Sontag's cave we (and by we here I mean all of humanity) must stay within the cave for eternity. In effect for our reality to be determined by still photography it would need to be the entirety or at the very least the vast majority of our experience. I would contend that even today that is unlikely to be the case even for keen photographers, back in the pre-flickr nineteen-sixties I would have thought it almost impossible.

More likely is the idea that we each model reality in our own heads, any of you could draw a triangle on your desk as you read this but the true reality the Form of triangle is singular and in my head it forms part of my intellect part of my knowledge. That reality will not change regardless of how many triangles get drawn.

Moving on to the twentieth century, if we apply Plato's reality to a modern era it holds up quite well ... if we consider the concept of 'Camera' we can easily form a mental reality of camera, but in that camera-reality it is nonspecific and nonjudgmental it's not 'a camera' it is the concept, the reality of 'camera'.

The same applies to 'car' or 'van' or 'truck' we can form a reality of each and we can separate each from the other without difficulty. Each of those realities, those forms are free from any value judgments without more information. To form a specific view we need to add 'sports' or 'armoured' or 'cable' to the generic car, it needs many aspects of perceptions combined to move away from the abstract.

So moving to the work itself, Photography, is the Photograph a different to other generic-reality? does it carry some moral or ethical value in addition to its reality? ... well no it clearly cannot. The photograph needs more information to become good or evil, appropriate, boring, reactionary or anything else ... a photograph is morally neutral.

Ethics, Photography and the Lack of a Telly

So if Photography in these terms is a medium, a neutral canvas that we, the photographers can doodle on. In much the same way that Titan doodled his 'The Flaying of Marsyas' that Ms Sontag finds so difficult, her difficulty wasn't the canvas or those new fangled oil paints that were the caused her difficulty it was the image the content of the painting, it was what Titan choose to include that she reacted to, the medium is as irrelevant as any other.

In the same manner I believe the medium of photography is blank. The only morality that photography has ever possessed is that that which the photographer has chosen to include in its content. However as we all know simply taking the photo is a tinny part of the process, beyond the taking and processing is the hurdle of editing and publication.

In order for any photograph to have an impact it needs to be not only published but publicised, so one can argue that photography is neutral and while the photographer may well be biased he (or she) is constrained and corrupted by their editorial process. Maybe one in one hundred of my photos ever see the light of day, maybe Ms Sontag didn't understand the editorial process and concluded that those photos of the Vietnam War in the NYT were the entirety of the press-corps output.

 

[Pioneer]

A photograph can contain a lot of information, but ethics or morality is not one of them. Those qualities belong to the people in the chain. And not all of those people will have the same morals or ethics so they will likely view any given photograph differently.

 

[RichC]

Ethics, Photography and the Lack of a Telly

So if Photography in these terms is a medium, a neutral canvas that we, the photographers can doodle on. In much the same way that Titan doodled his 'The Flaying of Marsyas' that Ms Sontag finds so difficult, her difficulty wasn't the canvas or those new fangled oil paints that were the caused her difficulty it was the image the content of the painting, it was what Titan choose to include that she reacted to, the medium is as irrelevant as any other.

I strongly disagree. The medium is everything.

Even Fox Talbott - in the pre-dawn of photography - got this, writing in 1844, in the world's first ever photobook:

[Photographs] differ in all respects, and as widely as possible, in their origin, from plates of the ordinary kind, which owe their existence to the united skill of the Artist and the Engraver. They are impressed by Nature's hand.
​

It wasn't coincidental that the book was titled "The Pencil of Nature".

Unlike paintings (or engravings), we perceive photographs to be inseparable from the event they depict: Sontag, echoing Fox Talbott, likens a photograph to a footprint. In other words, photographs are created by the event, unlike paintings, and are thus direct evidence. Photographs are objects inextricably bound to the event that imprinted them, as much as, say, a blood stain from a murder victim, or a cherished lock of hair from a lover.

This idea of the photograph is central. After all, we don't have "documentary paintings". Paintings aren't evidence of a fact, that something happened, but photographs are.

The foregoing is entirely separate from how well a photograph communicates the truth of the event it depicts - affected by the photographer's intent, and editing. The foregoing is also unaffected by who sees the photograph. After all, the blood stain remains evidence of violence even if it remains unseen.

You need to consider the photograph as a peculiar kind of object: as simultaneously an event (now past) and a picture.

It's because of this single, unique quality that I gave up painting to become a photographer.

 

[Sparrow]

I strongly disagree. The medium is everything.

Even Fox Talbott - in the pre-dawn of photography - got this, writing in 1844, in the world's first ever photobook:

[Photographs] differ in all respects, and as widely as possible, in their origin, from plates of the ordinary kind, which owe their existence to the united skill of the Artist and the Engraver. They are impressed by Nature's hand.
​

It wasn't coincidental that the book was titled "The Pencil of Nature".

Unlike paintings (or engravings), we perceive photographs to be inseparable from the event they depict: Sontag, echoing Fox Talbott, likens a photograph to a footprint. In other words, photographs are created by the event, unlike paintings, and are thus direct evidence. Photographs are thus objects inextricably bound to the event that imprinted them, as much as, say, a blood stain from a murder victim, or a cherished lock of hair from a lover.

This idea of the photograph is central. After all, we don't have "documentary paintings". Paintings aren't evidence of a fact, that something happened, but photographs are.

The foregoing is entirely separate from how well a photograph communicates the truth of the event it depicts - affected by the photographer's intent, and editing. The foregoing is also unaffected by who sees the photograph. After all, the blood stain remains evidence of violence even if it remains unseen.

You need to consider the photograph as a peculiar kind of object: as simultaneously an event (now past) and a picture.

It's because of this single, unique quality that I gave up painting to become a photographer.

Imagine ... two photographers covering a military conflict attend a recent battle, their equipment is identical, one of them photographs the glorious victors marching in triumph the other photographs the broken bodies of the vanquished ... in what way is the medium responsible for their divergent depictions of reality?

... and anyway clearly Jeff Wall's transparencies that Sontag references in Regarding the Pain of Others are not 'inextricably bound to the event that imprinted them' are they?

 

[RichC]

(a) The conflict. The medium is not responsible for the divergent views of reality. Each depicts an aspect of reality. No two people will perceive reality the same, so don't expect photography to! The two photographs you describe are both still evidence that that event took place, that there was a conflict, and as such are parts of that conflict. That they show differing truths is immaterial.

What's central is not what they depict, but when and where the photographs originate. Forget pictures - think of photos as forensic material from a crime scene: the collected material individually tells us different, perhaps even contradictory, things, but are proof that a particular event happened - just like a photograph.

The photograph is a window on the past. It's not a picture divorced from reality, like a painting.

(b) Jeff Wall. We construe all documentary-seeming photographs by default as truthful depictions of reality - regardless of how they were created: hence the endurance of passport photos. Jeff Wall deliberately plays with ideas of truth vs fiction - that's the whole point of his entire body of work.

Photographs, despite their connection with reality, are very poor at telling us about reality: we only have a tiny frame, so the view is both subjective and constricted; reality can be changed (like Jeff Wall does - he records a staged truth); and the image can be easily manipulated (whether by simple cropping or by complex layering of multiple images - as Gregory Crewdson does).

With digital photography and 3D rendering advancing so rapidly, there may well come a day when there is no such thing as documentary photography, a time when we perceive photographs to be as false as paintings. But we're not there yet, though we are on that journey: consider the Cottingley Fairies - photographs of fairies taken in 1917/1920, which caused a furore for and against the existence of these creatures, with support by national figures such as Conan Doyle. Looking at the photos a century later, it's hard to understand why they were taken seriously - the fairies are so obviously cardboard! But we have to consider the culture of the early 20th century and the extant belief that "the camera never lies".

The Day That Nobody Died
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin embedded themselves in the British Army as war photographers, and went to the Afghanistan front line. Instead of taking documentary photographs, they exposed a roll of photographic paper to daylight on the front line, unrolling the paper day by day.

For Broomerg and Chanarin, the project "The Day That Nobody Died" was all about evidence: the fact that these photographs were from a dangerous war zone. It is about the photograph as witness: what war photographs mean and how we relate to them; it is not about what scenes they depict. It is about the photograph as both evidence and a picture (or, rather, a non-picture).

 

[airfrogusmc]

THE THING ITSELF
What the photographer taking the picture and the historian viewing it must understand is that while the camera deals with recording factual things and events that form the subject of the photograph, it only produces a perceived reality that is remembered after the thing or event has passed. While people believe that photographs do not lie, this is an illusion caused by the mistaken belief that the subject and the picture of the subject is the same thing. One is reminded of the written inscription on the famous painting of a "pipe" by the Cubist painter Rene Magritte that refutes what we believe we are seeing by saying "This is not a pipe." Indeed it is a painting of a pipe and not a real pipe in the same way that a photograph of a subject is both an artifact and a record of what the photographer captured with his camera from nature. Because we see reality in different ways, we must understand that we are looking at different truths rather than the truth and that, therefore, all photographs lie in one way or another. Today's technological advances in digital manipulation of images that the public sees regularly in photographs and films now only makes it easier to understand what has always been true.-John Szarkowski

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

But we have to consider the culture of the early 20th century and the extant belief that "the camera never lies".

Doesn't every photographer know that the camera always lies? That was my point about metadata: without knowing the surrounding story, the fairies can be real or they can be fakes. This all sounds very like Schrödinger's cat in that box because, without the metadata, the cat actually is, for all practical purposes, both very much alive and very much dead and the fairies are both very real and very unreal.

Or as the lecturer told us on an newspaper course, which I attended a very long time ago, "without context, the reader has nothing but conjecture".

 

[airfrogusmc]

I think some of what Sontag was getting at with Plato's Cave is once we are exposed and see certain things we can't un-see them and as society we will keep needing a bigger and bigger shock to keep out interest.