is photography supposed to be reality ?

[Arthurwg]

There is only one "reality," and it exists in only one place: between your ears.

 

[faberryman]

There is only one "reality," and it exists in only one place: between your ears.

And yet there is general agreement about lots of things.

 

[Vaughn]

Now we are confusing reality with memory. The rabbit hole is getting deeper.

Not what I meant -- what the one eye-witnesss to a crime 'saw' can be radically different than what another eye-witmess to the same crime saw. Each witness' brain translated reality differently and created a different mental construct of what happened. THEN, memory comes in and down the rabbit hole we go!

edited to reduce punctuation and added 'mental'

 

[Berkeley Mike]

Yes, absolutely. In the last century or two there have been claims that reality exists entirely in ones head (philosophical materialism). I think reality is exactly what it appears to be, but then I think consciousness is primary, not matter (philosophical Idealism).

Light is part of conscious experience, whether perceived three dimensionally or recorded two dimensionally. As recording has developed in digital code rather than chemically, opportunities for intervention have become more accessible. Even out of the camera files are manipulated to popular taste, or to mimic alternative processes. As digital photography has no informational default, discrimination in its use is even more pressing than with film.

Excellent

 

[removed account4]

Bad memory or bad photograph, or both?

not a bad photograph ( i gave a copy to the subject ... she said she was extremely unphotogenic and wondered how i got a good photograph of her )
and the reporter had a memory like a steel trap ... it was a strange happening..

 

[Berkeley Mike]

I had to look up the red pill.

The first reference I have found for Red Pill re altering consciousness is from the first matrix film in 1999:

 

[Vaughn]

Reminds me of the joke- 'I have a photographic memory. Unfortunately, I forgot to load the film.' (now conflating cameras with brains)

Speaking of steel traps...that is how I picture my memory. Anything in there, stays there -- but it can get a bit mangled.

PS - not having seen the Matrix...at least not all at once...when John brought up the red pill, that was the first youtube query I put in. I knew enough to know where to look. Finding the use of the phrase by conservatives was a bonus. Instead of red or blue, these days it seems the choice is between the red pill, the blue pill, or the Kool-Aid.

 

[markjwyatt]

Speaking of steel traps...that is how I picture my memory. Anything in there, stays there -- but it can get a bit mangled.

PS - not having seen the Matrix...at least not all at once...when John brought up the red pill, that was the first youtube query I put in. I knew enough to know where to look. Finding the use of the phrase by conservatives was a bonus. Instead of red or blue, these days it seems the choice is between the red pill, the blue pill, or the Kool-Aid.

Interesting- the rabbit hole of course (used in the Matrix clip) refers to Alice in Wonderland. Kool-Aid = Jim Jones.

Seems the Democratic party has taken the blue pill (also, likely not coincidentally color for the party), but washed down with the kool-aid (USA). This is not to infer that the republican party (red color for the party) is great or anything, but may be the only party standing soon.

 

[jim10219]

And yet there is general agreement about lots of things.

True. But that doesn't really mean anything. For instance, at one time there was general agreement that the earth was flat and stood at the center of the universe, and the sun and stars all revolved around it. Ptolemy even came up with these weird epicycles to explain the retrograde motions of the planets. This was all stuff that pretty much everyone alive agreed on. Yet now we know all of that to be untrue. Or at least we think we know. Like I posted earlier, the whole universe could be a 3D projection of a 2D membrane. If that's the case, the earth and everything in it could be everywhere at once and no where at all. We could all be like an image captured on holographic film, where if you cut an image in half, you don't get half of an image, you get the full image, only smaller in scale and detail.

 

[markjwyatt]

...Or at least we think we know. Like I posted earlier, the whole universe could be a 3D projection of a 2D membrane. If that's the case, the earth and everything in it could be everywhere at once and no where at all. We could all be like an image captured on holographic film, where if you cut an image in half, you don't get half of an image, you get the full image, only smaller in scale and detail.

Flat earth seems very unlikely (unless as you say we are part of a 2D projection). If the universe is inhomogeneous (i.e., not homogeneous as ASSUMED), then many things are possible (earth at or near center, etc.).

 

[faberryman]

True. But that doesn't really mean anything. For instance, at one time there was general agreement that the earth was flat and stood at the center of the universe, and the sun and stars all revolved around it. Ptolemy even came up with these weird epicycles to explain the retrograde motions of the planets. This was all stuff that pretty much everyone alive agreed on. Yet now we know all of that to be untrue. Or at least we think we know.

When I said there was agreement on a lot of things, I meant perceptual rather than intellectual things. If we didn't we wouldn't be able to make our way through the world.

 

[Sirius Glass]

True. But that doesn't really mean anything. For instance, at one time there was general agreement that the earth was flat and stood at the center of the universe, and the sun and stars all revolved around it. Ptolemy even came up with these weird epicycles to explain the retrograde motions of the planets. This was all stuff that pretty much everyone alive agreed on. Yet now we know all of that to be untrue. Or at least we think we know. Like I posted earlier, the whole universe could be a 3D projection of a 2D membrane. If that's the case, the earth and everything in it could be everywhere at once and no where at all. We could all be like an image captured on holographic film, where if you cut an image in half, you don't get half of an image, you get the full image, only smaller in scale and detail.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Yeah, I think we all noticed that it is not a phenomenology forum, thank you. Nevertheless, Ron789 remark still stands.

It looks like both of you are from post BW film era. While I'm from the time BW film was the way to tell about reality. HCB showed the real India, China and USSR on BW film. It was as close to reality as it could be. I know it for sure because I have witnessed reality at on of the three. It is amazing how close he showed it on BW film, he took not only visual part of reality, but something we knew as insiders.
But do you both know who HCB is? Looks like not.

 

[Dali]

It looks like both of you are from post BW film era. While I'm from the time BW film was the way to tell about reality. HCB showed the real India, China and USSR on BW film. It was as close to reality as it could be. I know it for sure because I have witnessed reality at on of the three. It is amazing how close he showed it on BW film, he took not only visual part of reality, but something we knew as insiders.
But do you both know who HCB is? Looks like not.

Name-dropping is not an argument. For you maybe, not for me. Sorry but Ron789 comment still stands.

 

[Ron789]

It looks like both of you are from post BW film era. While I'm from the time BW film was the way to tell about reality. HCB showed the real India, China and USSR on BW film. It was as close to reality as it could be. I know it for sure because I have witnessed reality at on of the three. It is amazing how close he showed it on BW film, he took not only visual part of reality, but something we knew as insiders.
But do you both know who HCB is? Looks like not.

HCB... one of my inspirators when I started photography some 40 years ago. Like so many others, their books are in my library, I visited their exhibitions, I admire them, they inspired me. All my autonomous photography up until today is analog BW. Please don't accuse me of ignorance.
One statement you make says it all: "It was as close to reality as it could be". Yes, true. That acknowledges that it was not a 100% complete and accurate representation of reality. It was the best that could be done with the technique available in those days. All photo's ever made are based on reality, no photo ever made is a complete and accurate representation of reality. Even today, with the availability of 3D cinema, virtual reality etc., nothing is a 100% equivalent of reality.
Let's embrace photography for its quality of interpreting reality rather than the illusion that it is an equivalent of reality.

 

[removed account4]

It looks like both of you are from post BW film era. While I'm from the time BW film was the way to tell about reality. HCB showed the real India, China and USSR on BW film. It was as close to reality as it could be. I know it for sure because I have witnessed reality at on of the three. It is amazing how close he showed it on BW film, he took not only visual part of reality, but something we knew as insiders.
But do you both know who HCB is? Looks like not.

hi Ko.Fe.

i understand what you mean / are saying
i don't mean to put you on the spot but can you
put into words for me what about the black and white photographs
that HCB made relayed "something else" besides being a static black and white image?
i ask this because ive sometimes experienced similar things .. i see a photograph
or a scene in a film or read something and it is able to conjur something else besides
what is depicted ( photographed filmed written ) that makes me stop for a moment
get goosebumps and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and there's a feeling
i can't describe it but it is something ... is that reality or is that a memory ( collective? ) of a reality
that is universally understood by someone who experienced it
or ... something else that is triggered when one sees something like that..
do other bw street/ instantaneous "lifestyle" images do the same thing or is it that
certain je ne sais quoi that so many of HCBs images have?
ive been slowly coming to the conclusion that photographs aren't of reality at all, but some sort of weird
dream limbo alternative idealist state that somehow happens when we depress a shutter and time
is either truncated or lengthened and made static on a sheet of paper... IDK i can't really put it into words
but i don't know maybe that is what reality is ? and we just don't see it because its washing by us like a river...

 

[Berkeley Mike]

The phrase I have heard to describe this is that it "resonates" with you. It may be tapping into your primal hardwiring or some buried memory. It is where deja vu happens, which always makes me chuckle as I recall the event in real time. It is cool. I've learned to pay attention to that. I get goosebumps sometimes.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

Not what I meant -- what the one eye-witnesss to a crime 'saw' can be radically different than what another eye-witmess to the same crime saw. Each witness' brain translated reality differently and created a different mental construct of what happened. THEN, memory comes in and down the rabbit hole we go!

edited to reduce punctuation and added 'mental'

Rashomon.

 

[Vaughn]

Kind of...but without the motivations and self-interest of the characters of Rashomon that seemed to drive the different versions of the rape and death.

More like two uninvolved witnesses with full views of the action. One saying a person had a gun and the other saying no one had a gun, and both honestly believing they are right.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

I might suggest that we are nothing but motivations embracing experience.

 

[removed account4]

The phrase I have heard to describe this is that it "resonates" with you. It may be tapping into your primal hardwiring or some buried memory. It is where deja vu happens, which always makes me chuckle as I recall the event in real time. It is cool. I've learned to pay attention to that. I get goosebumps sometimes.

thanks, i had heard that expression before but i guess i never knew what it meant. and.. now i do

More like two uninvolved witnesses with full views of the action. One saying a person had a gun and the other saying no one had a gun, and both honestly believing they are right.

this is sort of / what i was talking about with the DC shooter and panel truck ... ( but different )

 

[Vaughn]

I might suggest that we are nothing but motivations embracing experience.

+1. One might as well get lyrical about it, eventually logic and reason seem to stop short.. I have always enjoyed Werner Heisenberg's, "Atoms are not things.".

When I was double-checking the quote, I came across another by him...

"The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite."

-- underlining came with the text...

 

[miha]

Is photography supposed to be reality? But of course. It's just that there are different realities.

 

[markjwyatt]

Is photography supposed to be reality? But of course. It's just that there are different realities.

Bishop Berkeley,Leibniz, and later relativists would say there are multiple views or interpretations of reality, all referenced back to the viewer of reality.

 

[blockend]

Let's embrace photography for its quality of interpreting reality rather than the illusion that it is an equivalent of reality.

Absolutely. The point about monochrome is especially interesting. Until the 1980s monochrome was the only serious photographic medium, colour was was for snapshots and advertising. Along came William Eggleston, who was critically vilified but whose detractors had to eat their words in double quick time, because everyone could see he was taking the medium somewhere new. Other people had been working in the wings with colour, men like Fred Herzog and William Klein whose photography was looked at with fresh eyes. The lasting effect was to show all photographs are illusions. Large format chromes, point and shoot negatives, smart phone photos, the medium is only as serious as the photographer.