Film philosophy

theblackcrusaders said:

That sounds great. I'd love to read it.

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My associate has agreed to correspond with you on his planned presentation. Please PM me with your contact information so that I can forward it on to him.

PE

Read "Root Signifiers of Photograph" which is a thread on Photo.net. My post is a synopsis of a presentation I gave at a Technical College when faced with a "Philosophy of Film" challenge. The audience was a class of soon to be graduates who hadn't seen film since they were freshmen.

Problem is: nobody in philosophy of arts / aesthetics gives a damn about film as a material medium. Some are excited by the "possibilities" of digital medium and what it means for the future, blah blah, but the bulk of aesthetics writing on photography is either medium-agnostic or simply takes for granted that film is its natural medium. Obvious, since more philosophical writing on photo is historically coincident with the use of film as the primary support of photography.

So if you want to contribute something to the discussion, you would be better served by using more general work, studying the role of medium in art forms, for questions such as What does marble contribute to the meaning of Michaelangelo's David? Look for people like Kendall Walton, Richard Wollheim, Noel Carroll, and David Davies (his "art as performance" is a tough, but very rewarding read on the role of medium).

Avoid Barthes, Sontag, and Benjamin if you are remotely serious, philosophically speaking.

A starting point you might find helpful is Criticizing photography by Terry Barret, just look on amazon .

Barthes and Sontag have little to say on the use of film as a recording medium, both expired before the onset of digital so the option of use was not an issue. You may well take a look at Baudelaire . Michael Kohler Constructed realities is worth looking at for a discourse on approach to modern photography and basic aesthetic principals,and the combination of all three should give you a decent starting point

keithwms said:

The idea of struggling to put into words what we can do more efficiently with images... it's a little bit too Susan Sontag for my taste.

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Thanks for that. Susan Sontag had a way of sucking the life out of photography.