In "Cupid's Pencil of Light: Julia Margaret Cameron and the Maternalization of Photography," Armstrong makes the claim that flaws and blemishes are the "result of the indexical workings of photography." But rather than conclude with this observation about the semiotic status of photography (semiotic status=its quality as a particular type of sign, i.e. an indexical sign) Armstrong radicalizes her argument, raising the stakes. She continues: each photograph is "a child born of photographic generation, of Mother Photography's reflexive labor." This metaphor of "labor" (feminine labor) is loaded, both in terms of the formal properties of the medium, as well as its ideological import in the context of the late 19th C. Armstrong's proposition, as explicated by footnote 20) relies on Roland Barthes famous discussion of photography. In Camera Lucida (which we will eventually reach), Barthes "speaks of the photograph as a desire for a return to the heimlich of the mother's body" and to a pre-linguistic realm. So: what does Armstrong mean by "mother photography" and "father Art?" Elaborate on the difference, formally and in gendered terms. What has "accident," "chance" and "magic" to do with Armstrong's binary? Consider this provocative passage:
"Over and over again, the generative link between mother and child is tied, erotically, to photographic generation." How is the physical relationship between figures (skin to skin as the author insists) allegorize photography?
Finally, with Sekula in mind, what would the ramification of Armstrong's radical argument be for Sekula's claim that photography was but a form of surveillance and archive construction in the interest of the centralizing of power. How might we reconcile these arguments?
The words “Father” and “Mother” have explicitly explained the opposite meanings in a gendered term. While in Armstrong’s writing, “Mother Photography”, in a technical term, derives its meaning from the emphasis of how the light rays, as a source from the nature, giving birth to the photographs and at the same time leaving traces of the process, “Father Art” stands for the established older art of Painting and for artistry, in which the artist as patriarch, artistically disguising any technical trace of the work. These two terms can also be brought further to the notion of how Cameron’s works, arguing as “Mother Photography”, are described as alchemically renderings of the real, opposite to optically accuracy and perfect, parts of the law of the “Father Art”, allowing no accident, chance and magic that mainly construct Cameron’s maternalization of Photography. With Armstrong’s arguments and Cameron’s works in mind, “Mother” stands even more for not only the photographer herself as a maternity, a female photographer’s labor of giving birth to her photographs as a female labor of giving birth to her child, and furthermore, a photographed mother, representing as her self-reflexive character, giving birth to her beloved offspring.
ReplyDeleteIt is mentioned by Armstrong that Cameron repeatedly used the body of the child to allegorize the notion of photography. Altogether with the above-mentioned light as a natural source giving birth to the photographs, and also how accidents leave indexical trace on the photographs during the generation of them, the physical relationship between figures, most obviously between the mother and the child, can be taken to allegorized how the light ray, the labor of the photographer, and all other factors intimately and inevitably affect the photographs.
After reading Bertillon and Galton’s approaches to photographic archive, I felt a strong difference between Cameron’s photographs and Bertillon and Galton’s works. They all present a sense of existence through their photographs, but differently. Sekula spent most pages mentioning the different approaches taken by Bertillon and Galton, explaining how “photography was to be both an object and means of bibliographic rationalization”, and finally came to the claim that photography was but a form of surveillance and archive construction in the interest of the centralizing of power. To me, both Bertillon and Galton’s photographic document, although originally photographed the actual presence of figures, later on tried to construct an apparition, a never-existed existence, which originally did not exist during the photographic generation, to represent one of their types of the archive. However, differently, Cameron’s photographs, claimed by Armstrong as an alchemically renderings of the real, leaving all kinds of traces, seems to bring up the notion of the physical presence of those particular moments during the photographing, the photographer and the photographed as example, and the photographic generation, Cameron’s domestic working environment as instance. Finally, with this difference in mind, while Sekula rationally argues for photography’s position for archive construction by detailing the function of it as a mean, Armstrong, however, seems to argue for Cameron’s photography by only emotionally and celebratingly putting it at a pole in contrast to established art at another pole, rather than elaborating on how Cameron’s photography serves as a mean of Cameron’s approach to what she has been arguing for her.
Ellen,
ReplyDeleteNice (although a little editing could have made your insights more concise). You touch on all the key problems. The question remains: what do Cameron and Bertillon have in common? Well, they both make the body the object of the photographic gaze. Moreover, and crucial for our purposes, they abstract the body, albeit differently. The next question, for which I will not furnish as instant answer, is this: are Cameron's and Bertillon's models of photography--or, more fundamentally, the index as a physical operation--reconcilable? How do we have maternal plenitude on the one hand, the "real," the prelinguistic detail of the world, and THE LAW, the limitation of the real based on ideologically legitimated division (language itself among them). That is key for class.
Louise O'Rourke
ReplyDelete- Mother photography is the creator giving life to the photographic image while Father Art wants to control what art is. Mother photography wll not allow it. Mother photography is, she has made her place.
- Accident, chance, and magic for some is what makes photography remarkable. Skin to skin allegorizes photography because through this idea of touching we get the meaning and feeling of Cameron's work. Allegory is a representaion of abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms. Her spiritual meaning is seen within the contact line between the skin to skin contact, making that feeling concrete to the viewer. The accident and chance are important because they add to the imagery of these dream like pictures through the chemistry markings and the hair line cracks. This for me feels as though I am looking through a piece of glass that is dirty and scratched into a world that I can only see from that view point, never in reality.
- Sekulas argument that photography was but a form of surveillance and archive construction in the interest of the centralizing power is one way that photography works but not the only way. Looking at Camerons work it shows another way photography works.
Photography in Camerons way is showing surveillance of the things she has created which can only be surveillanced when she creates never any other time.
As for the centralizing power of the argument this is true in that every photographer is the one in power. The photographer is the controller, the director that the subject must follow. The photographer can be the police documenting for records, the landscape photographer choosing which part of the landscape they will take a cut from, or the portrait photographer directing the subject how to pose. There is no right group for the centralizing power, everyone is the power if they choose to pick up a camera and take a cut out of that exact point in time.
Louise,
ReplyDeleteIs the word controller synonymous with authorship?
“Mother photography” is describing the nature of photography as a realm of magik (magik being used as the spiritual existence of rather than magic; a form producing illusions to the human eye or psyche) and the process of which light can be swayed by the maternal touch to become an object of beauty and preciousness. In comparison “father photography” is the manner in which photography itself is controlled by the law of the established art community, the established principles of discipline (and what it means to exercise discipline), and the extent of technical merit photography has reached.
ReplyDelete“Photography in the image of its own process, its own mode of production, rather than Photography ruled by the technical decrees of the established arts; Photography under the sway of the Mother, rather than the law of the Father.”
The mother aspect of photography flows seamlessly into the realms of the process through the consideration of photography as “accident”, “chance”, and “magik”. These descriptions of the medium show us that although photography is scientifically bound by the usage of chemical compounds and varying degrees of made materials, it is still the realm of the unknown that the medium truly is found. The medium truly lies in the magik of the mother; of the mother who has the power to conceive and produce offspring. This power, during Cameron’s time, is still an unanswered phenomenon that is fully given up to “chance”, “accident”, and “magik”. There was no formal understanding of what it was to conceive, or what it was to fertilize an egg, it was a higher power that the woman, or mother, was chosen to bare witness to. It was the witnessing of life, of nature, being nurtured into what would be a child for the family. It is although the child itself, in essence, the “latent image” of what photography is. It is the process of working through circumstances, or means of producing, without fully knowing what the final outcome will be and then with the understood methods of producing a final product coming into alignment a “latent image” is revealed; a child is produced. This majik is harnessed by the mother to sway the laws of nature itself to bend to the mission of creating; of creating beauty and life.
“Over and over again, the generative link between mother and child is tied, erotically, to photographic generation.”
The generating of photographical imagery is allegorically, according to Cameron and discussed by Armstrong, linked to the mother and shown through the use of the child in Cameron’s photographs. The use of the child shows the offspring of Cameron, not specifically related offspring, but the child as the product of the magik of the mother. The child is the precious product to which the mother has produced and to which the mother sways the sun to gently light the preciousness of what is the flesh of the child. Photography, itself, is capturing this moment of rapture and through its own nature is reacting to the flesh upon light (or the capturing of flesh upon flesh) through the process of its own revealing nature. Through the process of chemical upon chemical washing over the plate, or paper, to reveal a soft rendered image in which the guise of nature itself is revealed. It is almost as if the flesh upon flesh is poignantly encouraging the chemicals to sway to the “mother”; to render the light upon the plate, to exist within the realm of nurture, and then to reveal itself through the act of labor or passing through the final processes of chemicals to reveal the latent “precious” image to the now.
To Armstrong, through the discussion of Cameron, the idea of what photography is that Sekula brings up (the photograph as but a from of surveillance and archival construction) has failed in recognizing the overall indexical nature of what photography is. Yes, as Sekula writes, photography has shown us that a medium “in which objects preserve mathematically their forms” is possible. Through this mathematical truth, the real is preserved and ergo can be processed and archived for furthering the agendas of either power or to continue to stimulate the realms of exploration (may it be cultural, scientific, academic, etc.). But Sekula continues on in the discussion the nature of photography in the archival realm and continues to bring up the concept of the “individual”. The concept of the individual delves more into the realm of the spiritual nature of what photography could be, or is.
ReplyDelete“The individual could only be identified by invoking the powers of the genie. And the individual only existed as an individual by being indentified.”
The individual is being investigated by the nature of mathematics, by physiology, phrenology, and is trying to be realized in the “real”. But this pursuit of the individual fails, which Sekula acknowledges, because through the process of archiving the archiving fails because of the archive running a wild through the outrageous realization of quantity instead of quality. Instead of recognizing patterns or understanding the possibilities of the “individual”, the archive is simply broken down into the mathematics of the archived and the photographs (or data) collected is sifted through and filed and through the numbers is rendered useless because no form of rational revisiting of the archive is found to be productive (until fingerprinting). So the “individual” is not found and the “common man” is not found so the archive has is only an archive. But the individual can relate to what possibly Cameron is searching or working towards. The workings towards photography imitating life or working beyond the realm of the real and transpiring into this realm of romantic, ethereal, and transcendental accomplishment.
Which Sekula can relate to because the writing goes onto to describe Galton and his composite images and eugenics. And Sekula writes:
“The photograph was nothing more than the physical trace of its contingent instance. Galton, in seeking the apotheosis of the optical, attempted to elevate the indexical photographic composite to the level of the symbolic, thus expressing a general law through the accretion of contingent instances…Both Galton and Stieglitz wanted something more than a mere trace, something that would match or surpass the abstract capabilities of the imaginative or generalizing intellect.”
So the magik of photography is being chased and is being swayed under the hand of the Photographer. Through Cameron, via Armstrong, it is being swayed under the nature of the “mother” to harness the sun’s light and to euphorically capture the rapture of preciousness of the flesh upon flesh and the indexical nature of the process. Through Sekula, the archive has harnessed photography to invade its voids with the infinite data that photography can produce and how photography, even if it was being avoided, cannot escape its nature to also lie in the realm of wanting to surpass general and abstract capabilities. So how do we reconcile these two passionate opinions? We reconcile through the acceptance that photography
can have its one foot in the archive, through the ability to uphold mathematical truth, and its other foot in the realm of “art”; wherein lies the search for something greater than what we are or what photography itself is.
ReplyDeleteyes the one controlling is the author
ReplyDeletebut doesn't photography--the index--challenge authorship as such? Is that not the point of "Mother Photography?" That a physical material accidental non-will replaces authorial control?
ReplyDeleteAngela, NICE post, although I still question your use of the term "spiritual" which seems transcendental while Armstrong is insisting on the corporeal quality of the index, skin, etc.
ReplyDeleteArmstrong’s "mother photography" and "father Art" are terms that are loaded with interpretations and meanings, one of which I think refers to the separation of men and women in the living spheres of the 19th century, while also relating it to the cultural ideologies surrounding painting or ‘high’ Art of the time and hobby photography which resided in public mind as a ‘low’ art. This binary separation reflects the exclusivity of a male centralized culture in gender and in contemporary views of what constituted Art. This separation gives moving room for Cameron who at the time would have been considered a woman of high social standing to flex her creative mussels in a medium that was available to her only because of its ‘low’ standing in the Art community. In other words, Cameron a woman living in a time where women were given little freedom or choices found a way to use her ‘hysteria’ ("accident," "chance", "magic) to feminize her images creating a new position for photography as her identification system. This identification is what Cameron and Bertillon have in common. Bertillon’s interest was in an identification system based on physical measurements, while Cameron’s identification system is a bit more incommunicable. Cameron creates a system where the characters (mainly two binary women sinner & saint/mother) are interchangeable within the realm of Cameron’s fictions. This repetition of characters is Cameron’s way of creating an identification index of which the identifier is Cameron herself. Each of these systems creates and distributes power in different ways Bertillon’s idea of power is more of a social or class power while Cameron is creating power from her identifier status as photographer.
ReplyDelete“Furthermore, the direct equation seems to reside more with agency (of the child and of light) rather than with the figure of the child as mythologically manifesting the invention…So additionally arresting is the illuminated tablet in the centre of the composition upon which Cupid writes, together with the glowing outline that it casts upon the child, that one feels that Cameron is concerned to present the medium of photography itself as fundamentally inextricable from the figure of the infant…In Reilander’s Infant Photography and Cameron’s Cupid’s Pencil of Light, we are asked to read photographs of the naked infant as a double for photography’s immanent status, its latency. In both of these photographs, the troubled and contentious status of photography in relationship to painting is brought to the fore in a conjunction of an image of a naked infant with instruments or manifestations of both human and metaphysical agency.” (The Politics of Focus: women, children, and the nineteenth-century photography, Lindsay Smith)
ReplyDeleteWe discussed in class the comparison of the womb to that of the physical body of the camera. Just as Barthes “speaks of the photograph as a desire for a return to the Heimlich of the mother’s body” there is a similar desire to return to the camera or the eye. I say the eye not because it is required to create a photograph, but it is required to see one. It is this desire that stems from the desire for truth. To return to the scene of the crime and “see” with new eyes a truth. Photography, just like conception, understands the agency of life. They both are proof of penetration (light or semen). Just as a child came from a woman, a photograph came from a camera. Their relationship is undeniable. Cameron, by photographing children and the flesh and the agency of humans and non-humans recognized this relationship.
Sekula was commenting on the documentation of the body and the face as a way to “see” the psyche and marganalize and categorize society, but similarly so was Cameron in the way that she constructed the “good” and “bad” girl. The way I am attempting to reconcile them is this; There is an investigation into the body to see if it can show that which the camera is incapable of capturing; the self.
it does challenge authoiral control but at the same time there will always be that chance no matter how much diretion there is or control. i still think that the photographer is the one in control even though chance has a hand in it. there will always be chance and that cannot have control but the mere fact that the image is being taken and that chance happens with in the photograph that then becomes apart of the authorship whether choice or not.
ReplyDeleteyes, the photographer "chooses" the crop and frame. But choice is not the same thing as authorship. This can make the photographer's task more radical.
ReplyDeleteArmstrong's description of "Father Art" is built upon the idea that Art is forced and contorted into the desired shape, this exhibition of force is generally known to be masculine. The description of Art being under the law of the father also exudes masculinity in the sense that Art/ painting was predominantly a male venture with teachings set forth from the masters (the majority being male).. Art being a collaboration of hands, eyes, and mind; photography was its antithesis. Photography was considered by Armstrong to be Female or motherly due to its nature, photography required patience and chance, after a photo was taken time or gestation had to occur. The picture would be bathed in chemicals with great care being given to the length of time in each solution, and only when all the chemical baths had been administered would the end result be known. A degree of magic can be seen in the process to result in an acceptable image, however, Armstrong would disagree that any actual magic had taken place. Chance relates to the results and feminine by seeing the probability of capturing the desired image with the camera to that of the probability of conception. the idea of skin to skin touching in photography for Armstrong allegorizes photography itself. A mother must physically contact her child during gestation as must the photographer be in constant contact with the photographic plate during development. Following birth the mother can physically touch her child and maintain memories of said child likewise a photographer can hold a photograph which is a visual index of a previous instance. Armstrong would argue although Photography could be used as an archival and surveillance technique, to do so would be an egregious error. Photography offers much more than a method of cataloging items, it gives way to unconsciousness, the chance for images of beauty, and materiality, allowing everyone the ability to remember an individual post mortem. This last fact begins the subversion of class society through the ability of the proletariat to acquire a reproduced image of him/her self when before a portrait would not have been within their reach. the reconciliation of the differences in these two authors ideology would be that photography is a diverse tool with applications in many different settings. to force photography to be one or the other would be the same as saying that books can only be viewed as an object of art the text within should be disregarded. photography and Art, photography and science, from a modern view you can not have one with out the other, Art history relies on the scientific classification of reproduced images so that students may see a facsimile of the original work.
ReplyDeleteStephanie---
ReplyDeletePrior to photography Art, emphasis on the capital “A”, functioned in a very patriarchal fashion. The institution, The Salon/Academy, was the main sight of denotative process i.e the rule maker. Art was considered such, a sublimation of the art tool kit that may or may not have been available to any common person (untrained by the academy), by recognition of the Institution. This is the parallel relationship of Father and son, Man and boy, and Husband and wife. Correspondingly, women upon marriage are robbed of their individual identity by proper name: they now reside as Mrs. John Smith or, in the case of the Institution, Mrs. Salon Academy. All cultural opinions are operated and controlled by the Institution. Artist do not exist outside of the patriarchal laws until the advent of Olympia/photography. Cameron herself was untrained by Institution, yet was considered an artist; perhaps one of hysterics and mistakes but an artist nevertheless. Armstrong notes the very maternal process photography must endure in order to be brought into existence. The photograph is taken in a time and space that seems to be controlled, yet always has an element of uncertainty and chance where the end result is unknown. The pre-photograph then has to soak in its own gestation of chemical darkness in order to literally ‘develop’, all of which is a labor/work. Finally, when a photograph is brought into the light, one can see how it has turned out after running risks of complications (i.e being exposed to light too soon, using the wrong proportions of chemical, technical problems upon conception, etc.).
Despite the plethora of complication, a photograph usually emerges. This is the process of “accident,” “chance” and “magic”. Until recently, conception was unknown until the quickening, or when the woman could feel the fetus moving around inside of her. Still to some extent it is a chance happening, where no matter how strongly or frequently a woman wishes to be childless, she may end up with children. The opposite also applies, where no matter how long one stands around waiting for the perfect shot, it may just never happen. Also, upon viewing the photograph upon the surface, is the actual realization of the photographs existence (which brings us to Lacan and the issue of the mother’s gaze inserting identity). A small aside: the pictorial surface also brings us back to the maternal as a matrix (matrix, matron, mother, motherhood) for whatever will be deposited or developed there.
The indexical allegory of skin to skin is parallel to the indexical photographic process. Firstly, you have the impression of light on to a surface, making the conception of the photograph. Secondly, you have what I have referred to as the gestation period, where the chemicals literally touch the surface of the photograph in order to bring it into being.
I reconcile Sekula’s claim with Armstrong’s argument in the statement of “And the individual only existed as an individual by being indentified”. I bring this back to Lacan and the concept of the Mother’s gaze as establishing existence.
Matt's post has been emailed due to technical issues.
ReplyDeleteArmstrong believes in Cameron’s practice as a kind of arresting of photography
ReplyDeletefrom “Father Art:†the precisely measured, controlled, manipulated line, “the
straight, the sharp, the depth-of-field true†as she puts it. Cameron’s work
rescued photography from the love of law (the Establishment, the Academy), and
perhaps infused in it a kind of “law of love.†In the hands of the Mother, we
witness a kind of intimate communion of flesh, a circle rather than a sharp
line. Cameron parts her shutter, aperture, lens (circle), allowing for the
emergence of the line (light) to enter and exit, a kind of alchemy of
materiality and immateriality, a delicate balance of control and non-control, a
giving and receiving, grace, rather than fascist control of. Armstrong asserts,
“Cameron's conception of photography fell under the sign of the Mother. I end,
now, with the child-bridal pictures, for their eroticism turns on the
photographic too, and makes the case, perhaps better than any others, for the
blinding of technique by process, and the photographic binding of eros to error.
The best example of all of this is the Double Star, for its little conjugal
souls, whose Siamese-twinning conjures up the repeating as much as the marrying
of bodies, and with it
the repetitions and reproductive reversals that make up the photographic process
of generation, are embraced and marked by the traces of that process: a haloed
streak of light above, vignetting and matching itself to the kissing-cousins
curve or^
joined heads and Mary Hillieresque streaming hair beneath it; a hairline crack
and chemical stain below, spreading across the fissuring and joining of little
chests, the bit of cloth sandwiched between and the out-of-focus specter of a
childish hand on an infantile breast.â€
The physicality of skin to skin, the infusion of a kind of magical mysterious
power of touch and body serves to symbolize the materiality of photography
itself, the impression of light upon a surface, the physical relationship of it,
the corporeality.
I’m not sure if this adds anything to our discussion, but it seems worth the
post: In his introduction to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio, Jeffery Myers
speaks of the tremendous influence of D.H. Lawrence (who would go on to publish
some of his most influential works nearly a half century after Cameron’s
practice) on Anderson: “Lawrence believed that through the salvation of touch
and the power of nakedness men and women could break out of their isolation and
finally achieve communion. Lawrence, and through him Anderson, adopted the
theory of physical love that the Greek philosopher Plato had expounded in The
Symposium. In that work Plato explains love by supposing that the original
human being was physically very different from people in his own and in our own
time. That primeval being “was round, his back and sides forming a circle; he
had four hands and four feet, one head with two facesâ€â€”and was subsequently
divided in two. After the division, the two separate parts, each desiring the
other half, came together and threw their arms around each other, eager to grow
into one. Plato’s theory is immensely attractive because it explains the power
of sexual attraction and convincingly suggests that the union of masculine and
feminine complements represents the return of broken fragments to an original
wholeness.â€
Finally, with Sekula in mind, what would the ramification of Armstrong's radical
argument be for Sekula's claim that photography was but a form of surveillance
and archive construction in the interest of the centralizing of power.
Reading these texts back to back serves to rearticulate something that Prof.
Mansoor said the first lecture of day 1: the photography, since it’s inception,
has always been a kind of polyvalent phenomenon, a medium that per se has no
definitive essence, no general truth. It is only in the hands of its
practitioners, that meaning is constructed.
the above is Matt's post
ReplyDeleteArmstrong believes in Cameron's practice as a kind of arresting of photography from Father Art: the precisely measured, controlled, manipulated line, "the straight, the sharp, the depth-of-field true" as she puts it. Cameron's work positons photography in a new light, as something apart from the love of law (the Establishment, the Academy), enveloped by the law of love. In the hands of the Mother, we witness an intimate communion of flesh, a cirlce rather than a sharp line. Cameron parts her shutter, aperture, lens (cirlce), allowing for the emergence of the line, a delicate balance of control and non-control, a giving and receiving, grace, rather than a fascist masterly control. Armstrong asserts: "Cmaeron's conception of photography fell untder the sign of the Mother. I end, now, with the child bridal pictures, for their eroticism turns on the photographic too, and makes the case, perhaps better than any others, for the blinding of technique by process, and the photographic binding of eros to error. The best example of all of this is the Double Star, for its little conjugal souls, whose Siamese-twinning conjures up the repeating as muh as the marrying of bodies, and with it the repetitions and reproductive reversals that make up the photographic process of generation, are embraced and marked by the traces of that process: a haloed streak of light above, vignetting and matching itself to the kissing cousins curve or joining heads and MAry Hillieresque streaming hair beneath it; a hairline crack and chemical stain below, spreadng across the fissuring and joining of little chests."
ReplyDeleteThe physicality of skin on skin, the infusion of a kind of mysterious power of touch and body (occurring when the material world encounters itself chemically/spiritually) serves to allergorize the materiality of photography itself, the impression of light, the physical relatonship of it, the corporeality of the process, "The Encounter," as Martin Buber might put it.
I'm not sure how much this adds to our discourse but it seems worthy of posting: In his Introduction to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio, Jeffery Myers speaks of the tremendous influence of D.H. Lawrence on Anderson: "Lawrence believed that through the salvation of touch and the power of nakedness men and women could break out of their isolation and finally achieve communion. Lawrence, and through him Anderson, adopted the theory of physical love that the Greek philosopher Plato had expounded in The Symposium. In that work Plato eplains love by supposing that the original human being was physically very different from the people in his own and in our own time. That primeval being 'was round, his bak and sides forming a circle; he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces'--and was subsequently divided in two. After the division, the two separate parts, each desiring the other half, came together and threw their arms around each other, eager to grow into one.
Reading these texts back to back (Armsrong and Sekula) serves to rearticulate something that Prof. Mansoor mentioned in her day 1 lecture: that photography, since its inception, has always been a kind of polyvalent phenomenon, a medium that per se has no definitive essence, no general truth, but only particular truths, a kind of radically nominalist medium that derives its meaning only in the hands of its practicioners. On one hand, we have Cameron: photography as magic(k) and primeval Motherhood, and one the opposite end of the spectrum we have photography as practiced by the social scientist as a means of control and demarcation of the criminal, the reproduction of material world in its quantitative exactitude, so as to be filed away as a record and as "evidentiary" document, though Talbot would argue against such exactitude. And so, can these practices be reconciled? I'm not sure they have to be, or can be. Is photography a general essence, or a particular? A punctum?
Thanks for posting that fiasco for me Prof. Mansoor, I realize the latter one is easier to read. Posting is proving a feat for me, I'll clean up my act very soon ;)
ReplyDeleteVery succinct and perceptive, this line: "the photographic binding of eros to error." That sums the article up fairly well. We will come back to this when we look at Barthes more closely.
ReplyDelete