Photography theory

Sejanus.Aelianus said:
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".
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Absolutely. And that's why we have an uncomfortable relationship with photography. As a cultural default, we presume paintings to be lies, and photographs to be truths - and modify this position through context.

But often with photographs we have very little context, so we are left unnerved, looking at something caught between a lie and a truth, not knowing how much to believe - yet aware that there is a degree of truth present, since a photograph, as Fox Talbott said, is "impressed by Nature's hand".

Consider Nik Ut's famous Vietnam photograph. We know everything about this photo today, but without that context all we could say is that it depicts a real event - yet instead of a war photograph and suffering we might take it as a still from a Hollywood war film.

In summary, it's in the nature of the photograph to show us reality, but as through a glass, darkly. And I'm fine with that.
 
As I understand, Roger is not calling ignorant anybody, he is just alluding the old concept of "ignorance is bliss" suggested by Rich's statement.

Opting to ignore (in the sense of not-know, or not pursue the ultimate truth) some fact does not turn you into an "ignorant", in fact, frequently is indicative of wisdom.
 
Sparrow said:
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.
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Sparrow said:
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.
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Sparrow said:
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.
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From the very start of photojournalism in the nineteen-thirties there has been a biased approach both as to what was photographed and which of those photographs were published, but that bias was no more the fault of the medium than the stone was responsible for what Trajan had carved into his triumphal column following the second Augustan exception ... (and there was a man with a compensation complex)

Journalism has generally sought to supply what the public want to read, and usually what they want is the truth of things. In Trajan's day it was easy for the state to keep control of the media, it was carved in stone by the state. By the start of the twentieth century the media of the populus was the newspaper; and the newspaper had over the previous fifty years been tamed by the state. Tamed from the embarrassing radicalism of early reporting of the Crimean and South African Wars if not by state intervention then be convention or exclusion ... Churchill went from radical reporter in the Anglo-Boer War to appointing Beverbrook to censor the press in the Second War.

Had Sontag been referring to Capa, Taro, Seymour et al. in the nineteen-forties I could have had some sympathy with her, in the nineteen-forties and fifties that radical direct connection was restored between the public and the likes of Picture Post, Paris Match, Life, Sports illustrated for those few years, yes still-photography did have great sway on the perception of reality, but in the sixties and seventies? By then the states, the governments had regained control, requiring photographers to be embedded and impartial or by the Falklands War in 1982 simply not taking the talented ones.
 
rodinal said:
As I understand, Roger is not calling ignorant anybody, he is just alluding the old concept of "ignorance is bliss" suggested by Rich's statement.

Opting to ignore (in the sense of not-know, or not pursue the ultimate truth) some fact does not turn you into an "ignorant", in fact, frequently is indicative of wisdom.
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If our knowledge is imperfect -- seen through a glass, darkly -- then we are by definition partly ignorant; and RichC is "fine with that". Which means that he's fine with some degree of ignorance. Which leads directly to what you say: ignoring one thing or another does not make you generally "ignorant".

Life is not long enough to interest oneself in everything, even if one found everything interesting; and few people do. I think it was the editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times who thought that everything happened for a reason, except possibly football (Sir Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time).

Cheers,

R.
 
RichC isn't talking about ignoring anything, he's talking about the impossibility of accurately knowing an event on the basis of a photograph.
 
nongfuspring said:
RichC isn't talking about ignoring anything, he's talking about the impossibility of accurately knowing an event on the basis of a photograph.
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Is he? I didn't read it that way. Either way, it doesn't affect the argument. If we accept that all knowledge is more or less imperfect, there are usually several routes to the best understanding we can achieve.

Cheers,

R.
 
Sparrow said:
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.
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Sparrow said:
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.
Click to expand...

Sparrow said:
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.
Click to expand...
Sparrow said:
From the very start of photojournalism in the nineteen-thirties there has been a biased approach both as to what was photographed and which of those photographs were published, but that bias was no more the fault of the medium than the stone was responsible for what Trajan had carved into his triumphal column following the second Augustan exception ... (and there was a man with a compensation complex)

Journalism has generally sought to supply what the public want to read, and usually what they want is the truth of things. In Trajan's day it was easy for the state to keep control of the media, it was carved in stone by the state. By the start of the twentieth century the media of the populus was the newspaper; and the newspaper had over the previous fifty years been tamed by the state. Tamed from the embarrassing radicalism of early reporting of the Crimean and South African Wars if not by state intervention then be convention or exclusion ... Churchill went from radical reporter in the Anglo-Boer War to appointing Beverbrook to censor the press in the Second War.

Had Sontag been referring to Capa, Taro, Seymour et al. in the nineteen-forties I could have had some sympathy with her, in the nineteen-forties and fifties that radical direct connection was restored between the public and the likes of Picture Post, Paris Match, Life, Sports illustrated for those few years, yes still-photography did have great sway on the perception of reality, but in the sixties and seventies? By then the states, the governments had regained control, requiring photographers to be embedded and impartial or by the Falklands War in 1982 simply not taking the talented ones.
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Now to consider the root of my difficulty with Sontag's On Photography. I first read the work in the nineteen-seventies, while still at art college I think. Back then I'd have probably gone along with Rich's assessment, and prostrated myself to a superior intellect, certainly my tutors would have encouraged that view. Then on the first reading a single sentence in the first essay that made me stop and start thinking for myself.

In my normal fashion I'd read the first essay at speed to get a feel for the text, then started going through it in detail it was when Ms Sontag covered the role film and television played in our contemporary collective reality that I had real doubt about her understanding of the world. If we think back to those times, later day Communards on the streets of Paris, helicopter gunships, or patrol boats on the Mekong, rioting in Chicago or Grosvenor Square do we remember the photos in the glossy sunday-supplements? ... or do we, as I do, remember those flickering black and white images on the television, it was TV that informed my reality in those days, not still photography.

Television in the sixties and seventies was a window smashed into the wall of the cave, it formed a reality a still photograph could no longer do ... in much the same way the internet and citizen journalism is superseding the television's interpretation of reality today.
 
So you agree with Sontag? The shock has to keep getting larger and larger in all media to remain alive? The news with a few exceptions mostly PBS has since become just another TV show expected to get high ratings just like Big Brother. And images have and will continue to sway opinion. If not why would governments try so hard to control it?

And people still choose to learn or not to learn. (stay in or leave the cave)Many just grow horizontally choosing not to leave the cave and maybe TV has just made it easier to remain ignorant. And then those that have chosen to leave the cave will catch hell from those still in the cave if they decide to return. As seen many times on forums. So to the OP you can stay in the cave or pick the book up and read it yourself and make up your own mind and that will get you jsut one step close to the outside. Just be careful if you decide to return LoL....
 
nongfuspring said:
RichC isn't talking about ignoring anything, he's talking about the impossibility of accurately knowing an event on the basis of a photograph.
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Exactly!

(Roger: from my examination of photography in this thread, I thought that was apparent. "Fine" simply referred to an acceptance that photographs tell us very little about what they depict. Airfrogusmc understood!)
 
airfrogusmc said:
So you agree with Sontag? The shock has to keep getting larger and larger in all media to remain alive? The news with a few exceptions mostly PBS has since become just another TV show expected to get high ratings just like Big Brother. And images have and will continue to sway opinion. If not why would governments try so hard to control it?

And people still choose to learn or not to learn. (stay in or leave the cave)Many just grow horizontally choosing not to leave the cave and maybe TV has just made it easier to remain ignorant. And then those that have chosen to leave the cave will catch hell from those still in the cave if they decide to return. As seen many times on forums. So to the OP you can stay in the cave or pick the book up and read it yourself and make up your own mind and that will get you jsut one step close to the outside. Just be careful if you decide to return LoL....
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No ... and the last time I checked flickr there was little to shock anyone not in possession of a kitten and sunset phobia

Did you get round to reading it yourself BTW? ... you didn't say the last few times I asked
 
RichC said:
Exactly!

(Roger: from my examination of photography in this thread, I thought that was apparent. "Fine" simply referred to an acceptance that photographs tell us very little about what they depict. Airfrogusmc understood!)
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That's why in the '60s video became the dominant news source... video inherently includes its own context. Stills must be given context either from being in a series or from text.
 
Flicker certainly isn't my barometer. But have you seen the media in general. My wife's aunt won't even turn on TV for the violence. So you have become desensitized just as she said would happen LoL....

I have read it, several times. BTW. You should be able to tell if I have or not by my comments.

If you are talking stills (she was at times was referring to all image related media, Witkin comes to mind and all the video and multi-media imagery that he inspired certainly supports the need to keep getting bigger shocks (see the NIN Witkin inspired videos) and the fact the more of that we see the more desensitized we become as a society and that has happened. You need to look no farther than the ultra violent lyrics in Rap and the video games our kids and grandkids play.
 
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