The Best Philosophy of Photography? (Intelligible Ontology and Semiotics)

[MattKing]

I find these threads both difficult and interesting.

I have, however come to only one clear conclusion though: all who like to write about philosophy must surely be touch typists.

 

[andy_k]

An example of the vacuous type of item is his description of photographers working in black as opposed to other artistic approaches - this sounds deep and profound but he is fundamentally describing a working method, not a philosophy or meaning. Change the analogy and see if it holds - a sculptor working with stone, the basic element of our world evokes the more base or primitive feelings of his audience. Bullsh*t! "By contrast, the photographer inhabits the camera obscura, and he ultimately and always draws in the future viewers with him." Bullsh*t! Both are mediums of expression - the fact that the sculptor needs light to see is no more significant than the fact that I don't need a chisel to make a photograph. While his prose sounds impressive and admittedly somewhat poetic, it is not meaningful. However, I will take the time to read the book before deciding on its' value to me. If it has value to you, use it and care not what I think! I don't mean to discourage you, I mean to prod you into deeper introspection.

Thanks Kevin for your earnest and sincere engagement. Now, yes, these passages are well out of context--he is speaking very specifically about black and white photography at the outset, because of its technical purity and innocence of claim to be 'truly' 'representative' (which color processes may or may not have--he addresses color neg, polaroid, slide in their turn). But, in these two passages I've selected I don't think he's talking about blackness as a necessary environmental quality of the process, but the blackness as the absence of record, that in photography the important (philosophically distinctive) part is all of the whole of creation that you omit (says Nietzsche's Zarathustra, every Yes is an even greater No). The lighted room of the non-photographer visual artist attempts to pull in everything they can of reality (pertinent to their message) they see to build a further reality for us to see, where the photographer only samples reality through dispersed and intermittent penetration of the real (or rather, by the real); being in the darkroom, employing the camera obscura, blocking out everything but what is essential. It is a contrast between the certainty of signed reality, of myth, of story, of narrative, contrary to the photographer's working in possibility and brushing by the ineffable. So, I think that I meant to present here one area of his thinking that would be especially appealing and reassuring to the analogue practioner, troublesome though it may be.

Your comments would be very valuable as both a place to ponder and better understand what is worth holding onto out of this thing I've read and love, but also necessary for me to procede. Understand, that if I could do this all on my own I absolutely would; my brain doesn't do well outside the lively company required of the Socratic method (talking to myself gets depressing and confusing, but I do it all the time anyway).

However, I would not get my hopes up too greatly for a thread like this - my experience is that people will discuss the precipitation rate of AgN03 in a metol solution for hours or the log of a exposure curve (I have no idea what these things mean, as much as I have tried) but will not read through a thread like this. There is a reason philosophy departments are generally small - not only can't you get a job with such a degree, it is intellectually harder to pursue than a number of other disciplines (I'm looking at you accounting!)

Two points; this level of discourse I enjoy with you at present is all I had hoped for. Should one or two other brave souls open this (or any) book (or webpage, pdf, whatever) and join us it would exceed my highest expectations. Also, the chemical technical side of darkroom work is really not that hard, and mostly worked out for you. APUG being what it is I'm sure you've heard of Phil Davis' BTZS book (the absolute best exposure manual ever written), and if the whole quantification thing is appealing but bamboozling, that is the one book which will sort it out for almost anyone.

At the Universities I attended, these were fighting words - analytic philosophy is heavily distinguished from continental and it was pretty insulting to either camp to mistake one for the other. Perhaps things have changed in the past decade but I would be careful around certain academics with a comment like that.

Yeah, I'm obviously not a student of philosophy itself (political science) but I recognize the difference in branding Anglo v. Non-Anglo schools of Eurocentric thought, and meant to describe the work here as analytic philosophy to contrast it with the kind of "philosophy" (self-help/'spirituality'/how-to books) that the likes of Bill Jay and others produce, noting that it's from the continental tradition. I know you know that I knew that you'd know what I meant. But, also, I think that he means to bridge the gap between epistemic positivism (and its claims to more scientific and certain claims) and phenomenological thinking with his very acute appeals to the physical properties of our being, and the universe; critical-realist, or interpretivist, I'm not sure. BUT, I think on that account you're better equipped than I am to evaluate, so I eagerly but patiently await the time when you can spend the time, and to then let me know what you think.

 

[andy_k]

Towards a Philosophy Instigated by Photography

Perhaps I should have started at the beginning? (I wanted the OP to be to-the-point, but seem to have filled nearly 2 pages on my own trying to overcome its imprecision)

In his own words:

When once the availability of one great primitive agent is thoroughly worked out,
it is easy to foresee how extensively it will assist in unraveling other secrets in natural science.
Elizabeth Eastlake, Photography, 1857.

A philosophy of photography could be taken to mean the act of philosophizing on the subject of photography. That is to say,
one can examine photography by using the concepts philosophers have accumulated over a period of two thousand five hundred
years. One could inquiry into its links with perception, imagination, nature, substance, essence, freedom and consciousness.
The danger of such an approach is the projection onto photography of concepts created long before photography's emergence,
concepts which might prove to be ill-suited. In effect, many respectable philosophers following this path concluded that photography
was a form of painting or minor literature. This judgment was foreseeable since the concepts of western philosophy precisely
subscribe to a pictorial, sculptural, architectural and literary outlook. But the philosophy of the photograph can also designate the
philosophy emanating from the photograph itself, the kind of philosophy the photo suggests and diffuses by virtue of its characteristics.
All materials, tools and processes employ, through their texture and structure, a specific mode of constructing the space and
time around them. They engage "to a greater or lesser degree" specific parts of our nervous system. They induce certain gestures
or operations, while excluding others. As such, they endow those who use them with a certain lifestyle. There is no reason why film,
devices or photographic paper should be deprived of such action. Undoubtedly, they suggest an unforeseen space and time, a distinct
manner of capturing reality and the real, action and act, event and potentiality, object and process, presence and absence, in brief,
a specific philosophy.Evidently, the term philosophy is here taken in its most common meaning. A psychology, sociology or anthropology
of the photograph would have been equally suitable. And why not an epistemology, semiotics or indicialogy of the photograph?
It is vital to ask what the photograph itself imposes or distills, rather than what wedemand from it.This undertaking will therefore
be anything but easy. Because not simply our philosophies, but more importantly our languages were originally forged to speak about
painting, architecture and literature. On different occasions, God was a painter, a sculptor, an architect or a poet, only because man
had been. We therefore do not have the words to describe a photograph adequately. But specialized terminology would be even
more fallacious, as only common language has the power "through its bricolage" to re-encode itself so as to touch on new objects.
That is why one should forget all jargon here, and particularly that of linguistics. When encountering terms such as signifier and signified,
reality and the real, indices and indexes, perception and sensation or act and action, the reader is called upon to rediscover a naive
English that will define and redefine itself according to circumstance.

Henri Van Lier


​

Um, much more readable through the link above. I don't know how to (or if I can) change font and spacing. :S

Also, noticing a lot of Canada love up in here. F--in' eh rights.

 

[David Lyga]

see following (mea culpa)

 

[David Lyga]

mea culpa, redux

 

[David Lyga]

Andy K, there is a guy on APUG with a 'little' mind. His name is David Lyga. Would you tolerate him , through you as proxy, to query the deceased Henri Van Lier?

Is the nexus of "captured specific time" and "captured specific light" any matter to this philosopher? Do the two synergize, thus provide 'real' indice of their own, wholly unrelated to the individual 'reality' components that we know and understand through our own cultural brand of semiotics? (During the last century photographs were shown to tribes who had never had contact with 20th century imaging and they actually could not 'see' a 'correct' image, like we are trained to do.)

The spectacle, the actual photograph, has 'contained' within it this discrete 'nexus' and only THAT specific 'nexus'. Thus, maybe 'light' and 'time' become somehow 'different' when combined in this way because they share nothing with any other combination of these 'reality' components. Only during the actual exposure are these two components captured (but, only as indice, i.e., latent). We, as ignorant humans, turn this unique (truly unique) combination into 'reality' through the recognition of a respectable 'spectacle' in order to 'force' sense out of the mess.

Is this 'nexus' the key that is finally needed to 'open the door' so as to allow our basal understanding through transformation of the indice into index? - David Lyga

 

[Maris]

Quote Originally Posted by Maris View Post
Since there seems to be a lot of anxiety about reality I would offer the observation that there IS something particularly realistic about a photograph that separates it from virtually any other kind of representation. A photograph is generated when a physical sample of subject matter travels across space (at 300 000 Km/sec!) and penetrates the sensitive surface, lodges in it, and occasions changes that result in marks. This arrangement of marks, if it coheres as a picture, is a photograph.

Going to have to disagree with you here - photography is light interacting with a sensitive surface and is therefore not a physical sample of the subject matter since the light is reflected by the surface and not generated by the surface (a photograph of a light source being exempted). When the light hits me and reflects towards the camera, it does not carry a piece of me with it and I am not diminished by it - rather, my clothing, skin and the physical characteristics alter the light to produce the image. Put it another way, if theoretically you could take an infinite series of photographs of me instantly, I would not disappear since you are not taking anything away from me.

One should not underestimate the physicality of light and the process of photography. I offer some Gedankenexperiments to illustrate matters that photographers don't need to think about but philosophers mulling about photography versus reality need as basic physics information. I'll leave the mathematics out.

Experiment 1: You are in a lighted room standing on very sensitive scales. The lights are switched off and instantly the scales show a loss of weight. Your weight stabilises at a lower level.
Experiment 2: Again you are standing on those scales but this time in a dark room. Someone a couple of metres away fires a Metz 45 flashgun at you. The scales indicate an increase in your weight and then a decrease back to your original weight. If you are a phosphorescent being (unlikely) the full return to original weight might take some hours!
Experiment 3: Gold is yellow.
These experiments indicate that the light that illuminates things actually becomes part of those things. Light is a quantum entity with a particle aspect called a photon and a wave aspect manifest as an electromagnetic field. It's not a shower of tiny bullets as Isaac Newton thought.

Experiment 3 sharply illustrates an apparent anomaly. If photons are tiny billiard balls that reflect off hard things then how come a beam of white light hitting gold comes back yellow? For a photon to discover gold is yellow it actually has to do something impossible in classical physics. It has to penetrate metal. Quantum physics explains photon tunnelling and how photons penetrate gold (billions of atoms deep even) then become part of the gold and later get re-emitted in a changed form. Re-emission can be spoken of in terms of elastic and non-elastic scattering. We see the "changed form" as yellow light coming back where white light went in. If light is thought of as a wave instead of a photon then an analogous process proceeds and the end result can be quantifiable as re-radiation. In informal speech scattering and re-radiation are subsumed in the term reflection.

The serious point here is that the light collected by a camera really was a physical part of the substance of the subject matter. The classical mind-picture of reflection as light "bouncing" off the external surface of things is not what actually happens.

Another point missed by Van Lier and other philosophers who think about (but do not do) images, imaging, and possible connections to reality is that there is a whole class of image making procedures that are utterly physical in their workflow and their output. These include life casts, death masks, brass rubbings, papier-mache moulds, coal peels, photographs, and even footprints in a sandy beach. All of these things are unaguably embedded in reality and there is no philosophical credibility in vaporising about the opposite. Where things go off the rails, in the particular case of photography, is mistaking it as a species of painting or drawing; just with some mechanical aspects thrown in. The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out that many of the conundrums of philosophy originate from getting the original assumptions wrong, following up with the wrong words, and ending up with a labyrinthine confusion of impenetratable text. Henri Van Lier would not be the only one to have run this hazard.

 

[Vaughn]

I prefer the more simpler statement that I have outside my office door as my "Quote of the Week". It is by Ted Orland from his book The View From the Studio Door (paraphrased): It is the artist's duty to make art -- go out and do it.

 

[andy_k]

Is the nexus of "captured specific time" and "captured specific light" any matter to this philosopher?
The spectacle, the actual photograph, has 'contained' within it this discrete 'nexus' and only THAT specific 'nexus'. Thus, maybe 'light' and 'time' become somehow 'different' when combined in this way because they share nothing with any other combination of these 'reality' components. Only during the actual exposure are these two components captured (but, only as indice, i.e., latent). We, as ignorant humans, turn this unique (truly unique) combination into 'reality' through the recognition of a respectable 'spectacle' in order to 'force' sense out of the mess.

Is this 'nexus' the key that is finally needed to 'open the door' so as to allow our basal understanding through transformation of the indice into index?

David, in a word, "yes:"

PART ONE THE TEXTURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE PHOTOGRAPH Theoretically, one can assume that a certain number of photographs have no other purpose than to unintentionally capture light. MAX KOZLOFF, Photography and Fascination, 1979.

[...]

4. Isomorphic Imprints
Photographic photons, focalized by optical lenses according to relentlessly constant deviations, obey continuous equations. This regularity allows the rigorous positioning of their sources, and thus also a prospective spectacle, in accordance with spatial coordinates, as can be seen in geological and astronomical photographs. But simultaneously it subtracts from spectacle its local accentuation which would render it a true place. Besides being monocular (cyclopean), the photograph is also isomorphic. As it is rigorously spatial, it is always a non-place.

5. The Synchronous Imprint
Also, a photographic imprint can be dated close to a billionth of a second. Regardless of the time of exposure and the moment of impact of each specific photon, their appearance is ultimately datable by the arrival of the last of the photons. In case of a moving source and therefore also a possible spectacle, the succession of incoming photons can never give rise to what has always judiciously called movement. Thus, much in the same way the isomorphism of lenses and imprints evacuates the concrete place by replacing it with a purely localizable space, the alignment toward the passage of the last photon expels concrete duration, substituting it with a physical and exclusively datable time (tn).

[...]

8. Surcharged and Subcharged Imprints
In some respects, every photograph is disinformed. If we compare the visual singularities of the spectacle and what remains of it on the photographic imprint, the loss of information will be considerable, while colors (dozens instead of thousands) and lines become a sort of sharpened stains. But, conversely, even a mediocre photograph of the facades I pass every day in my street will reveal, thanks to its immobility and its accessibility to my sight, thousands of things that my perception, unstable and purposeful as it is, had never noticed there before. And this is yet another abstraction in relation to the concrete of everyday existence of these simultaneously filtered and superabundant representations.
​

Chapter IV - THE NON-SCENE:
ON THE OBSCENE IN STIMULI-SIGNS AND FIGURES
Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic
SUSAN SONTAG, On Photography, 1973.

Before anything, the photograph unsettles the scene. Firstly, the scene is a specific and marked place that is at a good distance from our eye and body, neither too near nor too far so that we can embrace with our sight what is taking place there. Next, it are [sic] the objects, characters and actions that will manifest themselves in this place with the desired clarity. The scene cannot be found in every civilization, it is lacking in that of Africa for instance. However, the scene was so forcefully introduced over here by the Greeks, and then penetrated the entire western history so intensely that it attained a fortunate immortality within a beatific vision, so that, in the eyes of many, photography is seen as undoubtedly invented to stage things and present dramatic or touching scenes even better than in painting.
​

His concepts of 'index' and 'indice' are not such that one becomes another, but indexes are the projections that we make onto the world when we're photographing things, and when we're looking at photographs. I'd say that your thoughts are very parallel with his.

 

[andy_k]

The serious point here is that the light collected by a camera really was a physical part of the substance of the subject matter. The classical mind-picture of reflection as light "bouncing" off the external surface of things is not what actually happens.

Another point missed by Van Lier and other philosophers who think about (but do not do) images, imaging, and possible connections to reality is that there is a whole class of image making procedures that are utterly physical in their workflow and their output. These include life casts, death masks, brass rubbings, papier-mache moulds, coal peels, photographs, and even footprints in a sandy beach. All of these things are unaguably embedded in reality and there is no philosophical credibility in vaporising about the opposite. Where things go off the rails, in the particular case of photography, is mistaking it as a species of painting or drawing; just with some mechanical aspects thrown in. The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out that many of the conundrums of philosophy originate from getting the original assumptions wrong, following up with the wrong words, and ending up with a labyrinthine confusion of impenetratable text. Henri Van Lier would not be the only one to have run this hazard.

That's all quite lovely, but I don't think that forgoing a distractingly complex (arcane?) explanation of the precise behavior of light (when it has so little influence on the rest of the consequential qualities of photographs, negatives et al) means that his ideas as written are somehow so deficient that it's beyond understanding or redemption. Also, I don't think you were paying enough attention to see that yes, he absolutely accounts for the permeation of light, its role as messenger, the simultaneity of illumination, etc.

Again, your language is confusing the concept of reality, and 'the real,' at least as far as his ontological position understands that relationship; more than that, it seems you're entirely confused about nearly all of the initial assumptions he states, and those that inhere, within this specific text. If you'd read even just the introduction it's clear that he is talking about how photographic objects are completely different from manugraphic images and objects--even those that are impressions of real people or things, in a number of ways.

For your benefit I'll furnish this post with another excerpt as well, to save you the trouble of looking through to see if there's anything in there that you're complaining he missed (I don't think there is):

PART TWO
PHOTOGRAPHIC INITIATIVES

Chapter X - THE INITIATIVE OF NATURE
In temperatures up to 40 million degrees that reign at the core of pre-stellar collapses, hydrogen runs out by being converted into helium, at the same time a gamma ray photon is released. Its energy dwindles at every step, and the photon undertakes its heroic journey: it will take a million years for it to reach the surface and to soar into space in the form of light, visible at last. A star is born.
CARL SAGAN, Cosmos

Nature is at work in all instrumentation. Clocks activate the laws of mechanics, and ink activates those of chemistry. However, in the majority of cases, natural laws are hidden, and all we can see is artifice.
In the photograph, by contrast, light is eminently present and explicit; as such, it marks its own naturality. Moreover, it unveils nature in its most basic aspects. In fact, light not only has the more or less localized naturality of water, air or rock. It takes on the structures of the universe in what is most wide and thin, in its transmissions from afar and in its minimal energies. This means that light contains and shows the two cosmic constants, i.e. c and h, coming across the photographer in a pronounced way.​

 

[cliveh]

David, in a word, "yes:"

PART ONE THE TEXTURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE PHOTOGRAPH Theoretically, one can assume that a certain number of photographs have no other purpose than to unintentionally capture light. MAX KOZLOFF, Photography and Fascination, 1979.

[...]

4. Isomorphic Imprints
Photographic photons, focalized by optical lenses according to relentlessly constant deviations, obey continuous equations. This regularity allows the rigorous positioning of their sources, and thus also a prospective spectacle, in accordance with spatial coordinates, as can be seen in geological and astronomical photographs. But simultaneously it subtracts from spectacle its local accentuation which would render it a true place. Besides being monocular (cyclopean), the photograph is also isomorphic. As it is rigorously spatial, it is always a non-place.

5. The Synchronous Imprint
Also, a photographic imprint can be dated close to a billionth of a second. Regardless of the time of exposure and the moment of impact of each specific photon, their appearance is ultimately datable by the arrival of the last of the photons. In case of a moving source and therefore also a possible spectacle, the succession of incoming photons can never give rise to what has always judiciously called movement. Thus, much in the same way the isomorphism of lenses and imprints evacuates the concrete place by replacing it with a purely localizable space, the alignment toward the passage of the last photon expels concrete duration, substituting it with a physical and exclusively datable time (tn).

[...]

8. Surcharged and Subcharged Imprints
In some respects, every photograph is disinformed. If we compare the visual singularities of the spectacle and what remains of it on the photographic imprint, the loss of information will be considerable, while colors (dozens instead of thousands) and lines become a sort of sharpened stains. But, conversely, even a mediocre photograph of the facades I pass every day in my street will reveal, thanks to its immobility and its accessibility to my sight, thousands of things that my perception, unstable and purposeful as it is, had never noticed there before. And this is yet another abstraction in relation to the concrete of everyday existence of these simultaneously filtered and superabundant representations.
​

Chapter IV - THE NON-SCENE:
ON THE OBSCENE IN STIMULI-SIGNS AND FIGURES
Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic
SUSAN SONTAG, On Photography, 1973.

Before anything, the photograph unsettles the scene. Firstly, the scene is a specific and marked place that is at a good distance from our eye and body, neither too near nor too far so that we can embrace with our sight what is taking place there. Next, it are [sic] the objects, characters and actions that will manifest themselves in this place with the desired clarity. The scene cannot be found in every civilization, it is lacking in that of Africa for instance. However, the scene was so forcefully introduced over here by the Greeks, and then penetrated the entire western history so intensely that it attained a fortunate immortality within a beatific vision, so that, in the eyes of many, photography is seen as undoubtedly invented to stage things and present dramatic or touching scenes even better than in painting.
​

His concepts of 'index' and 'indice' are not such that one becomes another, but indexes are the projections that we make onto the world when we're photographing things, and when we're looking at photographs. I'd say that your thoughts are very parallel with his.

If for the sake of argument, I was a cabinet maker and had spent many years working with wood, creating beautiful furniture as works of art. Can you also apply this navel gazing Philosophy, devoid of practical experience and artistic merit and make it meaningful?

 

[andy_k]

If for the sake of argument I was a cabinet maker and had spent many years working with wood, creating beautiful furniture as works of art. Can you also apply this navel gazing Philosophy, devoid of practical experience and make it meaningful?

I'm not sure what you mean, are you asking if there's a benefit to thinking about what photographs are, in terms of my creative production? Yes, I absolutely think so. I'm not long into my serious photographic career, just in its nascence really, but this one book has had a very deep and real effect on the way that I perceive the actions and objects employed to produce images, and what these image objects are to me and other people (and thus, opening a new line of understanding points the way to novel use and technique).

If you mean to ask if reading this book could help you be a better hypothetical carpenter, the answer is no. It's not an essay on aesthetics in general, and really concerns itself with the specific qualities and characteristics of photographs and photography that make it special and important.

 

[Rudeofus]

Experiment 2: Again you are standing on those scales but this time in a dark room. Someone a couple of metres away fires a Metz 45 flashgun at you. The scales indicate an increase in your weight and then a decrease back to your original weight. If you are a phosphorescent being (unlikely) the full return to original weight might take some hours!

Scales are stupid, they can't differentiate between force and mass. A perfect reflector will not gain mass from a flash, but the photons will exert pressure on it. The weight change indicated by the scale will depend on the direction the light hits! If you have a less than perfect reflector, some energy from the light flash will be converted to heat, which will actually increase the mass of that object until the excess heat gets radiated away. Same thing applies when a phosphorescent body takes on energy from the photons.

Experiment 3: Gold is yellow.
These experiments indicate that the light that illuminates things actually becomes part of those things.

This was trivially explained decades before photons or quantum physics were postulated. Any material absorbing/reflecting/transmitting electromagnetic waves differently dependent on wavelength will change white light to colored light.

You can make a filter that passes all visible wavelengths except for some range that gets reflected. This lossless filter will not take on any light, and the light passing through it or being reflected never becomes part of that filter. You can argue that the light and the dielectric filter layer somehow interact (else the layer wouldn't be dielectric), but we shouldn't mistake interaction for "becoming part of".

 

[Rudeofus]

In the photograph, by contrast, light is eminently present and explicit; as such, it marks its own naturality. Moreover, it unveils nature in its most basic aspects. In fact, light not only has the more or less localized naturality of water, air or rock. It takes on the structures of the universe in what is most wide and thin, in its transmissions from afar and in its minimal energies. This means that light contains and shows the two cosmic constants, i.e. c and h, coming across the photographer in a pronounced way.[/indent]

This almost reads like a middle age hymnus! I think it's quite a stretch to claim all these things for light, in particular visible light (which the author probably means given he writes about photography). Despite Maris's claims that light somehow penetrates and becomes part of Gold, it is a very limited means of exploring nature, it will reveal the surface of an object but rarely its interior. While it will reveal the structure of an object billions of light years in diameter, it will fail to do so with objects smaller than its wavelength. And it is beyond me how light would have any of the naturality of water, air or rock.

Most animals would completely ignore photos regardless of what they show. We have gained some insight into how our brain sees but that understanding is still too shallow that we could teach a machine vision system to detect non-trivial objects in changing scene lighting. I don't think one can derive the importance and significance of photography without considering the specific importance of the visual sense to us humans. Deriving it from superficial knowledge of modern physics is bound to create a mess, regardless of how much philosophical lingo is used to hide this.

 

[Kevin Kehler]

If for the sake of argument, I was a cabinet maker and had spent many years working with wood, creating beautiful furniture as works of art. Can you also apply this navel gazing Philosophy, devoid of practical experience and artistic merit and make it meaningful?

I understand why most members of this community are not interested in this type of discussion, the same reason most people who attend university either never take a philosophy class or just the required single class, it just isn't very popular. However, as I earlier said, nobody walks into a room of guys talking about transmissions, gears and the building of hot rods and says "can't we just drive cars?". Or into a fantasy football league and says "can't we just watch the game?". I don't take part in either of those activities but I understand that others do and they actually get some form of satisfaction out of them - I get satisfaction out of philosophy, of trying to understand why it is that I do something and in applying philosophical thought to photography, I find myself enjoying my photography more. If you don't enjoy philosophy, I don't mind. But please don't suggest it is not meaningful or devoid of artistic merit. Almost everything you value, find meaningful or interact with in someway is heavily influenced by philosophy, even if you aren't aware of it.

While I am not trying to pick on you Clive, you are not the only one who has made a comment like this on the thread - how about the next thread that asks "what is the ideal developer for film X?" or ask "how do I accurately perform Y technique?", I post "why can't we just take pictures and stop worrying about all of this other stuff that is devoid of artistic merit or meaning?". We are trying to bring greater merit to photography except that we are discussing why we do it, not how. My mother once asked me if I could give her a final answer in philosophy, as in could I just tell her the conclusion of a thesis I was working on so that it would be meaningful and therefore absolve her of having to read the 50 pages - I told her if I gave her the final answer without her reading the argument, the final answer would be meaningless since it only has value if you understand the process and the whole of the argument.

To use your cabinetry example, say you had two cabinets that were almost identical but cabinet A was outselling cabinet B 3-to-1. Would you not ask why this is such? What is it that draws buyers to this model over another? Are you navel gazing? Yes, since you are not doing anything, selling anything, creating anything but does it not still have merit or value as a maker of cabinets? The question that Andy is asking seems to be what makes a photograph into a photograph and not just a piece of paper with tones on it. How is the production of this item different than what any other artist does, apart from technique? I can't draw worth spit but if I put as much time into drawing as I put into my photography it would be a lot better - why do I continue to photograph and not draw then? Ask yourself this Clive - why do you photograph anything in the first place and not just make cabinets? If you practice photography to record events/times/places that are meaningful, then there is nothing wrong with that. If it is because you enjoy the process of photography and it makes you happy, then there is nothing wrong with that. If it is because as an artist, you have something to say and this is you way of saying it - congratulations, you now need to understand why photography provides you with your artistic voice and you are a philosopher. Or, if you are an artist who picked this medium at random and are too lazy to give your audience everything they deserve including your mental sweat of what it is you are saying, in my opinion, your art will suffer. I could tell you why I picked photography but without explaining the process, it would be meaningless.

 

[stormpetrel]

I'm quite happy to see this kind of thread on Apug but I'm quite aware of the sentence Plato wrote over the doors of its academy: "Let no one destitute of geometry enter my doors".
The fact that the language used by those philosophers is the natural language does necessary mean it is accessible to the profanes like me. It requires a lot of effort to understand the concepts involved here however you teased my curiosity enough to read the books of R. Barthes and Van Lier!

 

[andy_k]

...it is beyond me how light would have any of the naturality of water, air or rock.

He says here the "local naturality," which I think he means to say the (holistically) elemental quality that light has of our inhabited natural environment, like soil, water, air, etc.

Most animals would completely ignore photos regardless of what they show. We have gained some insight into how our brain sees but that understanding is still too shallow that we could teach a machine vision system to detect non-trivial objects in changing scene lighting. I don't think one can derive the importance and significance of photography without considering the specific importance of the visual sense to us humans. Deriving it from superficial knowledge of modern physics is bound to create a mess, regardless of how much philosophical lingo is used to hide this.

Yeah, for real. I think he does a good job of introducing his ideas on this in the excerpts I included in the OP, and gives extensive treatment to this exact issue throughout the text.

 

[Kevin Kehler]

The fact that the language used by those philosophers is the natural language does necessary mean it is accessible to the profanes like me. It requires a lot of effort to understand the concepts involved here however you teased my curiosity enough to read the books of R. Barthes and Van Lier!

It is difficult because it is a precise way of thinking and thus, very demanding since you have to understand what someone is saying and not what you think they are conveying. It requires very disciplined thinking which can only be gained with time and practice - this is in no way to say that others are undisciplined but rather to say that philosophers take it to a new level. I write government regulations and guidelines for a living and a misplaced comma or a plural where there should be a singular can cost hundreds of thousands, even millions. I need the discipline of my philosophy background to do my job - a wedding photographer missing a shot might upset the couple, but they are still married. I miss a reference and somebody could lose their house.

Please understand that I am not trying to stifle anyone from contributing - the point of my last thread is that we have 1.3 million threads here on APUG and maybe a half dozen are on the philosophy of photography (I mean that in a formal sense, not the generic "we have a philosophy of care in the hospital" meaning of the word). Nobody ever suggests when people are discussing agitation cycles, pre-rinse procedures, stop bath preferences or exposure logs that this is somehow not real photography and that they should stop these discussions and just take pictures. For some individuals, understanding how a developer works on a chemical level helps them take pictures since they know what is going to happen before they hit the shutter - for me, understanding why I am taking the shot is what helps me fire the shutter.

If we have contributed to someone being more curious or thinking more deeply about something, then it is worth it. I probably won't get around to reading the book till next week but it is nice to be able to have a discussion.

 

[stormpetrel]

It is difficult because it is a precise way of thinking and thus, very demanding since you have to understand what someone is saying and not what you think they are conveying. It requires very disciplined thinking which can only be gained with time and practice - this is in no way to say that others are undisciplined but rather to say that philosophers take it to a new level. I write government regulations and guidelines for a living and a misplaced comma or a plural where there should be a singular can cost hundreds of thousands, even millions. I need the discipline of my philosophy background to do my job - a wedding photographer missing a shot might upset the couple, but they are still married. I miss a reference and somebody could lose their house.

Please understand that I am not trying to stifle anyone from contributing - the point of my last thread is that we have 1.3 million threads here on APUG and maybe a half dozen are on the philosophy of photography (I mean that in a formal sense, not the generic "we have a philosophy of care in the hospital" meaning of the word). Nobody ever suggests when people are discussing agitation cycles, pre-rinse procedures, stop bath preferences or exposure logs that this is somehow not real photography and that they should stop these discussions and just take pictures. For some individuals, understanding how a developer works on a chemical level helps them take pictures since they know what is going to happen before they hit the shutter - for me, understanding why I am taking the shot is what helps me fire the shutter.

If we have contributed to someone being more curious or thinking more deeply about something, then it is worth it. I probably won't get around to reading the book till next week but it is nice to be able to have a discussion.

I couldn't agree with you more. It was not a critic but just to highlight a fact. It would be difficult for most of us to participate to a true philosophical debate as we do not know most of the concepts involved in philosophy but that does not mean it should not happen on Apug! I would find quite interesting to follow such debates!

 

[batwister]

Please understand that I am not trying to stifle anyone from contributing - the point of my last thread is that we have 1.3 million threads here on APUG and maybe a half dozen are on the philosophy of photography (I mean that in a formal sense, not the generic "we have a philosophy of care in the hospital" meaning of the word). Nobody ever suggests when people are discussing agitation cycles, pre-rinse procedures, stop bath preferences or exposure logs that this is somehow not real photography and that they should stop these discussions and just take pictures. For some individuals, understanding how a developer works on a chemical level helps them take pictures since they know what is going to happen before they hit the shutter - for me, understanding why I am taking the shot is what helps me fire the shutter.

If we have contributed to someone being more curious or thinking more deeply about something, then it is worth it. I probably won't get around to reading the book till next week but it is nice to be able to have a discussion.

I'll try and think more deeply for a second. If you'll humour me.

Sometimes I wish we had a master photographer or two to weigh in on these discussions (or a committee of such people to refer to), because I feel our judgement can become warped, working in obscurity - as the OP alludes to. I suspect many great contemporary photographers, who depend on their critical facility, would consider this, like you mention, as vital as fantasy football. This is coming from someone who has spent more money and time on photography literature and monographs, over the last year and a half, than making photographs.

Is there a philosophical question to be asked, as self-taught photographers and perhaps thinkers; where should we look for wisdom? It's a question I often ask and one that makes me wonder if I'm doing photography for the right reasons. We have philosophers (or ex-philosophers) here and political science students, but what about people with photography educations - those who have received guidance in tangential areas like this? This kind of discipline, after all, is why education and mentoring is so valuable. We're taught, not to indulge, but to remain clear headed in the way we assimilate. You'll notice the language the OP uses referring to the text (not to make a psychological assessment) - his attachment to it and his need, in making the thread, to find validation for his attachment to it. What I've taken from this thread is how dangerous it is to aesthetisize ideas and especially, rewarding others for doing so.

Some intelligent people have responded to this thread with dismissive comments, as Kevin did initially, perhaps with brief clarity of judgement.

 

[Rudeofus]

He says here the "local naturality," which I think he means to say the (holistically) elemental quality that light has of our inhabited natural environment, like soil, water, air, etc.

Sorry, I'm lost here. What does he mean by that? That light is transformed by our natural habitat? Or that light is as much part of our habitat as rocks, water and air are?

Yeah, for real. I think he does a good job of introducing his ideas on this in the excerpts I included in the OP, and gives extensive treatment to this exact issue throughout the text.

Sorry, but the excerpt from your OP don't say much about these issues. The author seems to be fascinated by modern physics to the point where he assigns ethereal properties to electromagnetic waves. He hangs on to some catch phrases from physics 101 (or the science section of daily newspapers) to derive a very odd theory of what goes on in photography.

Yes, electromagnetic waves connect the cosmos as we know it, but so does gravity which is not recorded by cameras. We have reasonably good eyes well suited for life in the Savannah during daylight, and a brain that can make incredible images out of what we see, but that does not mean "man captures light in a most balanced and integrating manner.". Cameras are certainly no black boxes to those who make or service them, and the fact that case and shutter let only those few photons in that are meant to be recorded does not make a camera "secret and genital". A video camera is quite illuminated inside while it records, BTW.

And that's one of the weird things in many of these "philosophy of photography" tractates. Authors go through great length to derive a very solid train of thoughts, including lingo that is nearly impenetrable to humans not trained in that subject, and then base their whole train on thoughts on a very fuzzy image of modern physics, brain science and aesthetics.

 

[cliveh]

If it is because as an artist, you have something to say and this is you way of saying it - congratulations, you now need to understand why photography provides you with your artistic voice and you are a philosopher.

Why do I need to understand that, as I don't wish to be a philosopher? I would suggest many photographers may ask the same question.

 

[andy_k]

light is as much part of our habitat as rocks, water and air are?

Yes, light is an essential quality of our natural habitat; we would not be the same kind of creature, and interact with one another and the universe in the same way, were it not for (what we perceive as) light.

The author seems to be fascinated by modern physics to the point where he assigns ethereal properties to electromagnetic waves. He hangs on to some catch phrases from physics 101 (or the science section of daily newspapers) to derive a very odd theory of what goes on in photography.

Well, light is ethereal, isn't it? Only because we have deduced its behaviors to elegant theories and equations doesn't deprive it of its 'magical' effect on our minds and bodies. Also, don't assume that this guy ( <- his CV, use google translate if you can't read french) doesn't have a reasonable grasp on physical theory. He's attempting to relate the empirical elements of environmental examination with subjective elements of our lived existence, and hypothesizing about how these things come together in photos.

Yes, electromagnetic waves connect the cosmos as we know it, but so does gravity which is not recorded by cameras. We have reasonably good eyes well suited for life in the Savannah during daylight, and a brain that can make incredible images out of what we see, but that does not mean "man captures light in a most balanced and integrating manner."

It's not about connection, but the transmission of information. The thing about light that makes it special is that it is a rich spectrum of EM radiation which moves from one place to another, and can be influenced by (and thus can carry information about) the things it interacts with--gravity, or any other natural perceptible phenomenon (like sound, or smell) cannot carry information in this way, we cannot 'see' with it alternatively. The integrated manner in which our physiology has been selected to interpret the information that light carries, balanced well around the spectral intensity of our star. I don't see what's confusing about this.

Cameras are certainly no black boxes to those who make or service them, and the fact that case and shutter let only those few photons in that are meant to be recorded does not make a camera "secret and genital". A video camera is quite illuminated inside while it records, BTW.

And that's one of the weird things in many of these "philosophy of photography" tractates. Authors go through great length to derive a very solid train of thoughts, including lingo that is nearly impenetrable to humans not trained in that subject, and then base their whole train on thoughts on a very fuzzy image of modern physics, brain science and aesthetics.

Cameras are, in fact, designed to be black boxes which we employ without being able to fully know and fully control (to the extent possible with manugraphic modes of object and image making). Of course, technologically we understand the principles and designs, tradeoffs and comprimises and mechanisms inherent in a tool, but it is almost impossible to completely fathom what is happening, all at once, inside of it while we use it. In the heat of the photographic moment, it is just a thing that we twist a knob, turn a crank, depress a plunger, slide a frame in and out of, knowing that at the end of it all we get an image that more or less precisely describes the world we point it at according to the skill of the user. Although we are a part of an instance of photographic activity, the camera itself handles the capture, registration, recording (the key aspect of the act) of the spectacle on its own; despite very complete technical knowledge and involvement, in the same sense as using a computer or the internet, these technologies mask their inner workings which we are not privy to in the action of their function.

It is secret in its exclusion, it is genital in its technological creative primacy; and here in the excerpt from the OP he's speaking more specifically about the (often solely inhabited) darkroom. I think your biggest problem with the book is that you're not actually reading it, content to (as a few others are, it seems) dismiss his ideas out of hand and without adequate inspection. Your first reaction to the text indicates to me that I think you'd find some value in there if you spent some time, I feel my first reply is still very valid. His theoretical grounding and explication is very precise, at least well enough suited to purpose, and if you gave it a read through over a couple weeks will definitely uncover some surprises.

 

[andy_k]

Is there a philosophical question to be asked, as self-taught photographers and perhaps thinkers; where should we look for wisdom?

You'll notice the language the OP uses referring to the text (not to make a psychological assessment) - his attachment to it and his need, in making the thread, to find validation for his attachment to it. What I've taken from this thread is how dangerous it is to aesthetisize ideas and especially, rewarding others for doing so.

Some intelligent people have responded to this thread with dismissive comments, as Kevin did initially, perhaps with brief clarity of judgement.

I'm sure that there are more than enough unthinking and unreflexive 'master' photographers (how would that even be defined? technical proficiency? theoretical proficiency? notoriety? earnings as a professional?) around who would scarcely consider reading far beyond those required in art histories and classes in 'critical attitude.' I look for wisdom on my library bookshelf; I open, scan, leaf through, and sometimes devour books, one at a time moving through the relevant section. I inspect them for their structural approach, their rigor, their readability, and relevance to my interests. You might try that, it's a lot cheaper than buying.

What I said in the OP was that this book has a singular importance to my practice, and have found it especially influential on the way I think about what and how I do this stuff. I definitely don't need anyone's approval on the internet (I haven't needed it to keep making pictures), and am more than content to make you (many?!) who would blanch at the idea of reading a book about photography see how silly you're being. I don't idolize him, or revere him in the same way that (it seems) 98% of APUGers do the major personalities of the American formalist movement, but he is certainly a major influence and teacher. What I want to do is to talk about his ideas, the ideas I've generated as a result of my encounter with him, and the ideas other people have; this is impossible without a place to start (ie, a bunch of people reading the same thing to be able to talk about it). I need other people to interlocute with insofar as I can only get so far myself. If a dozen people read this thing cover to cover and came back to publish excoriating five-thousand word literature reviews on the structural and conceptual deficiencies of this text I would enjoy re-evaluating my thoughts about the book, and defending the value that I see in it.

Generally, to the "I don't see the point" crowd, read Kevin's last post again. Read Van Lier's intro to the book (on page 3). Decide if you want to read it, make the decision, and give it a rest; you all sound like a broken record and it's page five. Your collective attitude is to regard him (because you don't recognize the name) as some whimsical hack know-nothing, which is not only absurdly insulting to his memory and academia generally, but a little to me as well; I know that I know a great deal more than you all seem to think I do, and for whatever reason believe that my favourite hobby is wasting my time in tractionless sophistry. Although my activity in this thread might indicate otherwise, I promise it really isn't.

 

[Rudeofus]

Well, light is ethereal, isn't it? Only because we have deduced its behaviors to elegant theories and equations doesn't deprive it of its 'magical' effect on our minds and bodies.

These "magical effects" are made "magical" by our brains, not by specific magical properties of light. Attributing these effect to some ethereal qualities of electromagnetic waves sounds quite esoteric. Once you accept something as "magic" or "ethereal", you stop asking, you stop trying to understand and that is (in my opinion) the opposite of what philosophy aims for.

Also, don't assume that this guy ( <- his CV, use google translate if you can't read french) doesn't have a reasonable grasp on physical theory. He's attempting to relate the empirical elements of environmental examination with subjective elements of our lived existence, and hypothesizing about how these things come together in photos.

Yes, I do assume that Van Trier has no formal education in physics and his CV does nothing to claim otherwise. That's ok, lots of people don't have one and get along with their lives quite nicely. But if one bases one's philosophy on things one doesn't really know beyond trivial facts, that's just another Alan Sokal event waiting to happen.

Van Trier claims that light and its associated information transmits through the whole universe but ignores that most of that light and information is lost somewhere in between. You do not connect with a distant monument by pointing a smart phone's led flash at it, billions of failed night photos prove it every year. Once you take that huge loss of information into account, that ethereal quality of light quickly disappears, and your philosophical view of light changes inevitably (or should at least).

It's not about connection, but the transmission of information. The thing about light that makes it special is that it is a rich spectrum of EM radiation which moves from one place to another, and can be influenced by (and thus can carry information about) the things it interacts with--gravity, or any other natural perceptible phenomenon (like sound, or smell) cannot carry information in this way, we cannot 'see' with it alternatively. The integrated manner in which our physiology has been selected to interpret the information that light carries, balanced well around the spectral intensity of our star. I don't see what's confusing about this.

One interesting difference between light and gravity is that you can't shield or reflect gravity. Light tells you about the surface, gravity about volume. Gravity lets you see behind and inside things, and it is necessarily omni directional and isotropic, at least much more than electromagnetic waves.

Because of this omni directional property, our inability to mask it or focus it, we can not "see" it (in the way of images) but very much sense it (see vestibular system). Funny thing is lots of people get sea sick if these two senses disagree in what they "see".

Cameras are, in fact, designed to be black boxes which we employ without being able to fully know and fully control (to the extent possible with manugraphic modes of object and image making).It is secret in its exclusion, it is genital in its technological creative primacy;

Yes, agreed, one interesting property of cameras is that they can create detailed images regardless of what the photographer knows about their internal workings. Note that a tape recorder can also create accurate sound recordings of whatever the microphone was pointed at. Also note that a whole class of microscopes creates images by throwing and recording electrons (their wave property doesn't make them electromagnetic waves). If you look at Mandelbrot sets (and their popular pictorial representations) you have an even stronger form of creative primacy: the computer not just records but also manages the subject matter.

and here in the excerpt from the OP he's speaking more specifically about the (often solely inhabited) darkroom. I think your biggest problem with the book is that you're not actually reading it, content to (as a few others are, it seems) dismiss his ideas out of hand and without adequate inspection.

The philosophical concept sounds interesting and a lot better founded than the author's theories of the ethereal qualities of light. Which is not a surprise because philosophy is the author's stronghold, not theoretical physics. I sure hope the book puts more emphasis on this than on pop science electromagnetic theory.