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Heroique
1-Aug-2010, 17:29
Photography is the only way of making a picture that is directly and physically linked to subject matter.

Cameras (light tight boxes in general) and film (light sensitive chemicals in general) are the essential components that make that link achievable. An 8x10 sheet of film actually absorbs about 10 to the minus 25 kilograms of stuff that a moment before was part of the subject matter. The penetration of this stuff, at 300,000 km/second, into a sensitive surface makes changes that enable a photograph to be revealed at the site of impact.

Photographs, of all picture making processes, are absolute certificates for the reality of their subject matter. The relationship is truly indexical in the semiotic sense. What photographs do not offer is a reproduction of subject matter in just the same way as a foot print is not a reproduction of a foot. Also photographs do not guarantee reliable identification of subject matter. Just think of all the honest photographs of floating logs in Loch Ness that “prove” the monster really is out there.

Yesterday, I came upon this very remarkable post. Thanks, Maris.

Part of me applauds. Enthusiastically.

Part of me objects. Strenuously.

I know why I’m applauding, but I can’t quite explain why I’m objecting. That’s why I’d enjoy some input from other photographers as thoughtful as Maris. I’m not going to say I completely understand his unique post, except to say that I think it gets across a critical point about one type of photographic reality – at the unhappy expense of another type.

The critical point it gets across, I think, is made with his strange but effective analogy between film and footprints. To paraphrase it as best I can – “film is never a transcription of reality, just as a footprint can never be a foot.” Very nice. But then the next point that should be on its way never arrives. :confused:

First the reason why it’s missing, then what I think that point is.

When one uses the precise language of science to show the relationship between film and reality, even as well as Maris does, one runs the risk of overlooking a more important type of reality – one that science has no business describing, and that photography has every business to capture and communicate.

Film – if it’s not a transcription of reality, as Maris makes plain – is always, I think, an abstraction from experience. I really should say “an abstraction from human experience.” You’ll note the detour I’ve just taken from “reality.” ;) But no need for fans of “reality” to worry. My detour from that word is only apparent…

For I’m still thinking of a reality that falls under the heading of human experience. And this reality, I think, is the one that matters to photography – and more generally, to art. For simplicity sake, I might call it “psychological reality.” (I’m sure a better term exists, so I hope I’m being clear.) The abstraction of which the photographer might try to create on film in the field, and communicate in a print back home. Or the abstraction of which a viewer might respond to in a photograph on the wall, in a book, on the screen.

If film or a photograph can be such a thing – an abstraction from psychological reality – then do the observations in Maris’ post still apply? That is, would film still be an “absolute certificate for the reality of its subject matter”? Or better, if film can be such a thing, might it transcend Maris’ restrictions, and do what he says film can’t – “guarantee reliable identification of subject matter”?

-----
And finally, would it be a good idea after all to divide the “reality” of photographic subjects into two types – the scientific kind, the psychological kind – and remember that famous remark, “Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point” [“Let’s be careful before we let reason try to describe every kind of reality”]?

BetterSense
1-Aug-2010, 20:41
I like pretty pictures.

Heroique
1-Aug-2010, 21:59
Whoops, thanks BetterSense – this should be in the “On Photography” forum.

Sorry folks, no pretty images here, just philosophy … refunds available at the counter.

But we’ll keep the bar open. ;)

mdm
1-Aug-2010, 23:29
Please don't make me think.

David

Maris Rusis
2-Aug-2010, 00:39
Heroique is right. There is a psychological dimension.

It is also true that photography, of all the expressive arts, is hostage to subject matter and the material limitations of lenses and light sensitive materials. And there is simply no way around the problem without ditching photography and becoming a painter or a Photoshop expert; painting by numbers in effect.

A photograph, if it is aimed at doing more than reminding us what something looks like, if it is intended to reward intense looking, needs to have deeper levels of meaning. These deeper levels are carried by visual metaphors and similes. That's where psychology comes in. For example if you want to express "drama" then a photograph of a gothic castle at night during a thunder storm will do fine; for "beauty" try a sunny landscape with rocks, flowers, trees, clouds, waves, and so on.

It is the hardest thing to find subject matter so that your photograph will say what you want it to say. Plus it's doubly hard to have camera and film on hand at all times just in case the subject matter decides, just for a moment, to deliver. Mainly it's a litany of disappointment with rare flashes of fulfilment.

When things do work out well one could say, semiotically speaking, a photograph instantiates subject matter and also illustrates what the subject matter means. To borrow Minor White's concept a photograph can show not only what things are but also make us think what else they are.

rdenney
2-Aug-2010, 06:44
When things do work out well one could say, semiotically speaking, a photograph instantiates subject matter and also illustrates what the subject matter means. To borrow Minor White's concept a photograph can show not only what things are but also make us think what else they are.

Does it illustrate what the subject matter means, or what the photographer means by his perspective of the subject?

I like the footprint analogy, but I prefer a different analogy that means the same thing. A photograph is a projection of a subject. More often it's a projection of the relationship between subjects to each other. Move a bit and the relationship changes, along with the projection of it. We manipulate that projection in a variety of ways, including throwing parts of it in and out of focus, allowing it to move during the exposure, and profoundly changing the subject relationships through camera position and framing. None of these choices upsets the indexical relationship between the photographer and the scene, but it does alter the relationship between the actual scene and our representation of it.

The fact is that two people don't see the same scene in the same way even if they are standing next to each other looking right at it. Each will sift the elements of the scene through the filter of their experience. Each will respond to different focal points. The images in our minds are already profoundly different. As models of those mind images, the photographs are one further step removed from reality. I've made photographs with others, and afterward both of us wondered if we were in the same place as the other person.

The uniqueness of photography is the indexical relationship with the scene, but that does not mean that it represents truth or fact. When we look at the night sky, we see patterns of stars and give them names, as if that pattern represents one entity in our minds. We draw pictures of the things those names invoke, using the stars to define the important points. Different people with different experiences draw different pictures around different groupings.

But each pattern is a projection, two-dimensional in our perspective, of four-dimensional space. Parts of each of many of these patterns are vastly greater distances from us than other parts, and viewed from another perspective in space (or another time) an entirely different pattern would emerge. If we photograph a piece of the night sky, that is reality, but it would be unrecognizable reality to someone viewing our image from another part of the galaxy. Without undermining our indexical relationship with the subject, we still only see a faint projection of what it really is, and each of us perceives it differently.

Coming back to earth, and to the discussions that led to Maris's first post, we have the notion that a photograph is an "absolute certificate" for the reality of their subject matter. Maris qualified that statement to point out that viewers may not perceive the reality being portrayed accurately. But I want to consider those two words, absolute and certificate. It seems to me that despite the indexical connection between subject and photograph, there is an obscuring process that goes well beyond the effects of removing dimensions. We try to reconstruct those dimensions through our choices. Selective focus is a means, for example, of separating a subject from its background. Even if we perceive the background sharply with our eyes, our stereoscopic vision and incredible image-processing capability makes it possible to separate that subject without rendering the background as a soft blur. That blurry background is perhaps an indexical summary of the background, but I think it would challenge the notion of an absolute representation.

(Would a sufficiently defocused image of any given scene represent reality if all we see is an 18% gray rectangle? The indexical relationship would be there. But does it do any good?)

And one thing all certificates include is the authority of its issuer, otherwise it isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Somebody has to be certifying something. Thus, the truth of a photograph is not inherent in its being a photograph--that only ensures an indexical relationship. Truth, or even fact, can only be stated about a photograph, not by a photograph. Nobody should believe a photograph; they should believe (or not) what the photographer/printer says about the photograph.


When things do work out well one could say, semiotically speaking, a photograph instantiates subject matter and also illustrates what the subject matter means. To borrow Minor White's concept a photograph can show not only what things are but also make us think what else they are.

Rick "with Minor White on this one" Denney

Maris Rusis
2-Aug-2010, 16:45
Maybe all of this should be in On Photography but Rick Denny's insights are profound and thoroughly worthy of reply even if things get downright abstract and long winded.


Does it illustrate what the subject matter means, or what the photographer means by his perspective of the subject?
I like the footprint analogy, but I prefer a different analogy that means the same thing. A photograph is a projection of a subject. More often it's a projection of the relationship between subjects to each other. Move a bit and the relationship changes, along with the projection of it. We manipulate that projection in a variety of ways, including throwing parts of it in and out of focus, allowing it to move during the exposure, and profoundly changing the subject relationships through camera position and framing.
The idea of "projection" raises a deep question that has not been explored adequately in the philosophy of photography: what is subject matter? My own experiments suggest a surprising answer. Here is what I did some years ago.

Me and a pal were in the Australian desert photographing during our Duane Michaels sequential photographs phase. I walked toward his Leica while holding a #25 red filter while he fired off frames. Eventually I screwed the filter to his lens and walked away with the camera still clicking regularly. Is the red filter subject matter while it is some distance from the camera but not when it is mounted on the lens? What if the red filter was mounted on the rear element of the lens inside the camera. Would it be subject matter then?

The only consistent and coherent answer to this and similar questions is that photographic subject matter, in its most fundamental sense, is actually no more and no less than the real optical image at the focal plane of the camera. Everything else, objects in the real world, lenses, filters, flashguns, and so on are merely the ingredients whereby we summon up this real optical image. Nevertheless indexicality still holds good. A tree for example "makes" and image and the image "makes" the photograph; no mistakes, no fudging.


None of these choices upsets the indexical relationship between the photographer and the scene, but it does alter the relationship between the actual scene and our representation of it.
I plead that the relationship between the photographer and the scene is not indexical but rather it is discretionary.


The fact is that two people don't see the same scene in the same way even if they are standing next to each other looking right at it. Each will sift the elements of the scene through the filter of their experience. Each will respond to different focal points. The images in our minds are already profoundly different. As models of those mind images, the photographs are one further step removed from reality. I've made photographs with others, and afterward both of us wondered if we were in the same place as the other person.
Yes this is true! We see with our minds not with our eyes. Our vision is the result of mental processing that stitches momentary eye images, memories, expectations, perhaps delusions, and then gives everything the HDR treatment before presenting it to our consciousness. And we cannot voluntarily turn any of this off. Just think, until photography was invented nobody saw what the world looked like without HDR!

The uniqueness of photography is the indexical relationship with the scene, but that does not mean that it represents truth or fact. When we look at the night sky, we see patterns of stars and give them names, as if that pattern represents one entity in our minds. We draw pictures of the things those names invoke, using the stars to define the important points. Different people with different experiences draw different pictures around different groupings.
Truth is a slippery concept particularly for people who have not made a formal study of philosophy. Even for professional philosophers truth is a subject of ongoing headaches in epistemology. Writing about truth tends to involve difficult to write, difficult to read verbiage. In general terms truth refers to propositions of the form "if A then B". Should it be the case that A is necessarily and sufficiently causally linked to B then the identity "if A then B" is true. Some robustly convincing truths can be discovered by observation. These are usually called facts. Facts are pretty reliable but they fall short of absolute certainty. One can conceivably be mistaken.
Another kind of truth is an a priori truth. This is a proposition that is always the case whether one makes any observations or not. A priori "truths" are always true. For example, that a triangle has three sides is an a priori truth. It is a nice question if there are any a priori truths about photographs in particular. The answer is yes. Using the IF/THEN form of proposition we can say with a priori certainty IF we have a photograph THEN some real world subject matter must correspond to it.

But each pattern is a projection, two-dimensional in our perspective, of four-dimensional space. Parts of each of many of these patterns are vastly greater distances from us than other parts, and viewed from another perspective in space (or another time) an entirely different pattern would emerge. If we photograph a piece of the night sky, that is reality, but it would be unrecognizable reality to someone viewing our image from another part of the galaxy. Without undermining our indexical relationship with the subject, we still only see a faint projection of what it really is, and each of us perceives it differently.
Exactly so.

Coming back to earth, and to the discussions that led to Maris's first post, we have the notion that a photograph is an "absolute certificate" for the reality of their subject matter. Maris qualified that statement to point out that viewers may not perceive the reality being portrayed accurately. But I want to consider those two words, absolute and certificate. It seems to me that despite the indexical connection between subject and photograph, there is an obscuring process that goes well beyond the effects of removing dimensions. We try to reconstruct those dimensions through our choices.
Yes, there is an obscuring process because a photograph is not a replica of the subject. A human foot print, for example, absolutely certifies the existence of a foot but not how tall the person was who left it.

Selective focus is a means, for example, of separating a subject from its background. Even if we perceive the background sharply with our eyes, our stereoscopic vision and incredible image-processing capability makes it possible to separate that subject without rendering the background as a soft blur. That blurry background is perhaps an indexical summary of the background, but I think it would challenge the notion of an absolute representation.

(Would a sufficiently defocused image of any given scene represent reality if all we see is an 18% gray rectangle? The indexical relationship would be there. But does it do any good?)

Our perceptions are non-indexical and indeed so called "digital photography" is non-indexical too. Here's a recent experiment. I take a snapshot of a small piece of clear blue sky with my Canon 350D camera. In Photoshop I notice that all pixels have the same value. One pixel will do just as well as several million. Further investigation indicates the pixel value corresponds to Pantone #291. I go to my Pantone swatch book and cut a small square of #291 and stick it on a white mount board. The result is reminiscent of what I saw and identical to what a digital system could produce. But it is not indexical. A Kodachrome, even a thoroughly out of focus one, would be.


And one thing all certificates include is the authority of its issuer, otherwise it isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Somebody has to be certifying something. Thus, the truth of a photograph is not inherent in its being a photograph--that only ensures an indexical relationship. Truth, or even fact, can only be stated about a photograph, not by a photograph. Nobody should believe a photograph; they should believe (or not) what the photographer/printer says about the photograph.
I say otherwise. A photograph is inherently physical evidence; everything else is merely testimony no better than the credibility of the person offering it.


Rick "with Minor White on this one" Denney
I wish I had a general purpose witty signature line like this.

Heroique
2-Aug-2010, 17:13
Below is “The Night Café” (Van Gogh, 1888) – so the thread doesn’t feel all alone in an “Image Sharing” forum, and because I thought it might expand on our comments about the “realisitic” connection between images and the subjects they portray.

It’s one of his first “disturbing” paintings, certainly disturbing for the artist, if we believe what he wrote about it.

But is it “disturbing”?

If you’re Maris (and this were a photograph), it sounds like the answer depends on the literal, physical “subject matter, so that your photograph will say what you want it to say,” he says. In other words, on the literal pool hall, if the artist can find it, then compose it, to his intentions. I find a lot of truth in this. And if you’re Rick, it sounds like the answer principally depends on whether the viewer and artist look at it “through the filter of their experience” – presumably an emotionally similar one. I find a lot of truth in this, too. Taken together, these two approaches seem to explain a lot. (Note: I just saw Maris’ post #7 arrive as I write this, and a quick glance seems to bring his thoughts a little closer to Rick’s.)

More broadly, what about the work’s “realism”?

Here’s just one of many ways to address the question: To many who have enjoyed only solid mental health, “The Night Café” may not look realistic at all. In fact, the oil painting may simply remind them how Velvia-50 saturated the colors of one of their landscape shots, or how a wide-angle lens distorted the lines. Others who haven’t always enjoyed solid mental health – and let’s add to this group those whose empathetic talents allow them to imagine the unhappy experience, Van Gogh perhaps among them – may look at this painting and recognize just how realistic it is, especially when comparing their reaction to Van Gogh’s own horror-filled comments about the work…

Brian C. Miller
2-Aug-2010, 17:55
It is the hardest thing to find subject matter so that your photograph will say what you want it to say. Plus it's doubly hard to have camera and film on hand at all times just in case the subject matter decides, just for a moment, to deliver. Mainly it's a litany of disappointment with rare flashes of fulfilment.

Photographs do not "speak." The written word "speaks." The written word says what I want it to say, when I want to say it, when I've taken a bit of time to think it through. I think it is the photographer's personal misdirection to seek a subject to fill a photographic concept. That is more the realm of the motion picture, to create based on a play or other theater. I think it is better to see what is, and photograph it for its maximum portrayal, as it is, in its own moment. If I do not see it then, perhaps I will see it later. I like the Buddhist philosophy, to live without delusion.

The photograph is visual. It invokes an image, out of context from its moment of creation. The subject delivers nothing. It exists on its own outside of our expectations. The film is impressed with light, but not like a footprint in the sand. There is no footprint in the sand that invokes passions as does a photograph.


When things do work out well one could say, semiotically speaking, a photograph instantiates subject matter and also illustrates what the subject matter means. To borrow Minor White's concept a photograph can show not only what things are but also make us think what else they are.

Up to a point, Lord Copper, up to a point. What else is a photograph of the Hindenburg, burning? What else is a photograph of President Kennedy's assasination? What else is a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald's assasination? What else is a photograph of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executing Vietcong operative Nguyen Van Lem? What else is a photograph of a 1930s New York mobster, lying face down in a pool of his own blood? What else is a photograph of the death of a Spanish militiaman?

When we view those photographs, do we really pause to think about what else they could mean? Or are we caught in the moment that they recreate?

I agree with you that the photograph recreates a symbol representing something. However, I think that a photograph that doesn't deliver its concept in a way to rivet our attention is, to some degree, a failure. It becomes something which is truly meant to cover the cracks on the wall behind it, or to fill empty space because we choose to loathe the emptyness. Nature does not abhore a vaccuum; space is full of it, and it is also full of beauty.

mdm
2-Aug-2010, 18:01
Reality? What reality?

It feels real because what you see in that painting is a performance of his subconscious. A dream. We all have a subconscious and we dream, we are familiar with many of the symbols in his painting from our own dreams, perhaps only subconsciously.

I know nothing about him or his painting but my interpretation is that is the shadow, a subconscious facet of his self, next to the snooker table. He is surrounded by heavy drinkers and stands alone. On the counter is a vase of flowers and on the wall a clock is ticking. The only other sober looking figure is a woman at a distant table with someone, male or female, I am shure he knew. The unknown woman, an important symbol in male dreams, represents the feminine, our mothers, sisters, lovers, wives, girlfriends, nannies etc. He stands at the table alone, with no one to play. The painting must have been made at a crossroads in his life. Did he join the heavy drinkers, did he come to terms with his anima dreams, did he pick up the the snooker stick thingy and sink a ball. What happened to the white ball?

Damn good painting.

mdm
2-Aug-2010, 18:26
The idea of "projection" raises a deep question that has not been explored adequately in the philosophy of photography: what is subject matter? My own experiments suggest a surprising answer. Here is what I did some years ago.

The only consistent and coherent answer to this and similar questions is that photographic subject matter, in its most fundamental sense, is actually no more and no less than the real optical image at the focal plane of the camera. Everything else, objects in the real world, lenses, filters, flashguns, and so on are merely the ingredients whereby we summon up this real optical image. Nevertheless indexicality still holds good. A tree for example "makes" and image and the image "makes" the photograph; no mistakes, no fudging.



You are full of shit (read rather verbose). The subject matter is the photographer. Ask Richard Avedon, he understood. You are the subject in your own photographs, even if the photograph is of a tree, house, cloud, person, naked person, you are the subject, the thing in the photograph is the object. What if Ken Lee were to swap places with Frank Petronio, What would Kens girly pictures look like and what would Franks pretty flowers, leaves, trees, clouds and barns look like. Of course, I am too.

David

Heroique
2-Aug-2010, 22:44
(Note: I just saw Maris’ post #7 arrive as I write this, and a quick glance seems to bring his thoughts a little closer to Rick’s.)

I’ve just now had a better “glance” at your post, and was happy to read, “We see with our minds not with our eyes.”

That adds an agreeable complexity to your earlier, more “scientific” claim that the photographer must seek-out & find a literal, physical subject (such as your “gothic castle,” or a pool room in “The Night Café,” etc.) to serve as an appropriate metaphor for the “intense feeling” he wants to convey.

Such a process – even if it sounds, well, rather mechanistic – nonetheless reminds me of a really good poet, quill on chin, searching for that perfect, concrete image to do the same thing. So this earlier claim of yours continues to “explain a lot” about photography for me.

Yet, I sure do like Brian Miller’s contrasting, Buddhist-like caution, that “it is the photographer's personal misdirection to seek a subject to fill a photographic concept.”

In view of your interesting “mind’s eye” clarification, Maris, it sounds like the capable scientist in you would be drawn to this, too.

;)

Brian C. Miller
3-Aug-2010, 14:14
The subject matter is the photographer. Ask Richard Avedon, he understood.

Bullshit. The subject matter is the image on the film, or rather, what is on the final print. And no, I can't ask Avedon, because he's dead.

Sure, everybody photographs the same thing differently.

Thought experiment: imagine I make a still life that can be shipped around the world and everybody can photograph it. Here's the setup: a cardboard box with a piece of paper on top for diffuse light, a hole with a clear piece of plastic over it in the side for the camera lens, and a wooden ball glued into a corner. (Like a Fabrege egg, but cheap and ugly.) The box is big enough that an 8x10 with 300mm lens can focus on the ball. Each photograph must have at least part of the ball visible, and the lens (or lens hood) must be pressed up against the box.

How many ways are there to uniquely photograph that using a view camera?

Now, let's say that 100 of us photograph the still life, and produce 50 prints. That's 5000 prints. Shuffle them. Now, how many unique ideas are there? How many can be readily grouped together? How many Ansel and Earl prints are there? How many would form "a body of work?" How much composition was in the camera? How much composition was in the enlarger?

And at the end of it, the theme of this experiment is that we've stopped looking at a ball glued into the corner of a box. It has all gone awry. The subjects we are trying to see are the photographers, who aren't the subject of a photograph. The photographer isn't in the photograph, but outside the photograph. We don't really know much about the photographers. All we have are 5000 goofy prints, which are headed for a landfill.

A photographer may be the subject of a competition, but the subject of a photograph is what's in the image.

rdenney
3-Aug-2010, 14:17
Two or three points in your post keep nagging at me, demanding comment, despite that I'm quickly running out of vocabulary to maintain a philosophical discussion. After all, I'm just a fat, middle-aged engineer who takes pictures.


Yes, there is an obscuring process because a photograph is not a replica of the subject. A human foot print, for example, absolutely certifies the existence of a foot but not how tall the person was who left it.

That footprint absolutely certified the existence of a foot only if we believe it was a human foot that made it. It would have been just as easy to make it with a plaster cast of a human foot, or we could have exercised considerable craft and technique and carved the relief of a footprint using, say, toothpicks and tweezers. To believe that it was a fake, we must assume someone either 1.) wanted to deceive us, or 2.) admired their ability to carve a footprint and wanted us to admire it, too. The footprint doesn't prove anything unless we can also demonstrate that the foot was available to make it, and that nobody faked it. Thus, it is not absolute, and it certifies nothing. If we believe a person who persuades us that the footprint was made by a foot, then it is their authority that certifies the foot's presence, not the footprint itself. Short of that, we are making assumptions based on the apparent realism of the footprint, but that assumption may be easy (if we are gullible) or difficult (if we are informed by having perfected our own technique for carving footprints) to muster up.

I have worded the above carefully to allow it to translate directly to photography, but I think without undermining your use of the analogy.


Our perceptions are non-indexical and indeed so called "digital photography" is non-indexical too. Here's a recent experiment. I take a snapshot of a small piece of clear blue sky with my Canon 350D camera. In Photoshop I notice that all pixels have the same value. One pixel will do just as well as several million. Further investigation indicates the pixel value corresponds to Pantone #291. I go to my Pantone swatch book and cut a small square of #291 and stick it on a white mount board. The result is reminiscent of what I saw and identical to what a digital system could produce. But it is not indexical. A Kodachrome, even a thoroughly out of focus one, would be.

Yes, we can use any photograph as a model for a painting by the numbers. Theoretically, we could take a laser and manually control it to simulate the light that might have fallen on an emulsion, though that would probably be more difficult than carving a footprint with tweezers and toothpicks. Or we could make it easy by connecting the laser to a computer and feeding it a digital photograph. If we print a digital photograph using only photographic tools--that is--manipulating what was placed in the file by the action of light projected within the camera and not by rearranging details using software--then we have maintained the photographic integrity of the image. Yes, we could fake it and lie about it, but that would be a lie. That lying is easy should make us skeptical. It should not prove to us that truth doesn't exist.


I say otherwise. A photograph is inherently physical evidence; everything else is merely testimony no better than the credibility of the person offering it.

In a courtroom, evidence means nothing if testimony does not establish its truth. We can have a gun in a plastic bag with an evidence tag hanging off of it, but it is the testimony of the ballistics expert that persuades us the gun was the one used in the deed, the testimony of the custodian of evidence that demonstrates that the chain of custody was not broken or undermined, and the testimony of the fingerprint technician that persuades us the accused's hands were the last to pull the trigger. Without that testimony, we have the fact of the gun, but no access to the truth of what the gun means.

To me, the fact of a photograph is easy. It is established by the indexical relationship, and by the believable assurance of the photographer/editor that it shows what was there. But we don't have truth, and to me the truth is much more difficult. My photo of the stars is a fact, but it provides little insight into the truth of how they are arranged. Or, the photo by Capa of the death of the Spanish rebel has been called into question. I've read many arguments stating that even if it was staged, that it still told the truth and the public perception that it changed was good and proper. If they are right (and I'm not taking sides), then we have a photograph that may lie about facts in order to tell the truth. That possibility disturbs me deeply. Given how easy it is to lie using photos (using methods available since the beginning), I am skeptical when viewing them. I believe what is in a photo only when the testimony that accompanies it is persuasively authoritative.

Rick "thinking truth derives from fact, not the other way around" Denney

mdm
3-Aug-2010, 18:53
Bullshit. The subject matter is the image on the film, or rather, what is on the final print. And no, I can't ask Avedon, because he's dead.

Sure, everybody photographs the same thing differently.

Thought experiment: imagine I make a still life that can be shipped around the world and everybody can photograph it. Here's the setup: a cardboard box with a piece of paper on top for diffuse light, a hole with a clear piece of plastic over it in the side for the camera lens, and a wooden ball glued into a corner. (Like a Fabrege egg, but cheap and ugly.) The box is big enough that an 8x10 with 300mm lens can focus on the ball. Each photograph must have at least part of the ball visible, and the lens (or lens hood) must be pressed up against the box.

How many ways are there to uniquely photograph that using a view camera?

Now, let's say that 100 of us photograph the still life, and produce 50 prints. That's 5000 prints. Shuffle them. Now, how many unique ideas are there? How many can be readily grouped together? How many Ansel and Earl prints are there? How many would form "a body of work?" How much composition was in the camera? How much composition was in the enlarger?

And at the end of it, the theme of this experiment is that we've stopped looking at a ball glued into the corner of a box. It has all gone awry. The subjects we are trying to see are the photographers, who aren't the subject of a photograph. The photographer isn't in the photograph, but outside the photograph. We don't really know much about the photographers. All we have are 5000 goofy prints, which are headed for a landfill.

A photographer may be the subject of a competition, but the subject of a photograph is what's in the image.

Take 100 people, put them all in identical featureless rooms. Place a
monitor in front of each of them streaming verbose and poorly reasoned
philosophy on a loop. Alow no form of interaction, no communication.
Leave them for a long time. (And they do this and much worse to
thousands of people every day, they should be tried and I hope they
will, one day.)(Or is that how we live our lives every day?)

Your box will appear in surprising and interesting ways. Your box is a
form of opression, censorship, if you like.

I am free to make photographs of whatever I like. I the, photographer,
control the camera, if I can't control the object itself, at least I
can choose when and what to photograph.

Brian C. Miller
3-Aug-2010, 19:19
Let me guess, you are referring to television, right? My TV died a natural death back in the late 1990's, and I never replaced it. I espouse that everybody should stop watching TV, and get a good hobby. Things would be much improved for the world, I think.

Anyways, no I don't think that a box to photograph is a form of oppression or censorship. I think that it puts into perspective, what is the subject of the photograph? Since you've gone off on a tangent, I'm guessing that my reasoning is good. The subject is what is being represented on the final print. I make a point of the final print, because Jerry Uelsman does some interesting stuff using multiple negatives to achieve whatever it is on his final print.

The difference between photographing the scene in the box (creative interaction with a tool) and sitting and staring at the TV is that one requires a high degree of thought and the other doesn't. Making unique photographs takes some ingenuity. I bet that Frank Petronio could even make his hot babe photos using just that scene. It would take more work, but I bet he'd do it.

And still, what is the subject? In a mass of 5000 prints, it is still the ball in the box. Not the photographers.

Vaughn
3-Aug-2010, 20:37
I wonder if wading in here is a smart idea or not...;)

The subject I photograph is light. It is what I am looking at on the GG. I allow it to fall on the film in such a way as to serve as a template for expressing what I experience in that place, time, and light. I then take that template and use it to fashion a print. I go through this exercise to teach myself how to See. I can share the print with others to share what I have experienced and learned. But I hesitate to separate the light from the experience, the learning from the sharing, the subject and the seer.

Nothing we experience is "reality". All our senses feed our brains which creates its own version, its copy, of reality. As the Hindus and Buddhists would say (and perhaps the Christian mystics), it is all Maya, all illusion. Only a handful of people experience reality directly. I am not one of those, but I am at least aware that I do not.

I do not photograph, nor even see, people, chairs, rocks, trees -- I only see and capture the light that reflects off of them. I capture their presence, not their actuality, by the way light bounces off of them. Then I take that pattern of light and transform it into a print that expresses my limited understanding of their reality...and my relationship with that reality.

Vaughn

Jack Dahlgren
3-Aug-2010, 20:50
Take 100 people, put them all in identical featureless rooms. Place a
monitor in front of each of them streaming verbose and poorly reasoned
philosophy on a loop.

Hey, don't be so down on this forum!:)

mdm
3-Aug-2010, 21:53
Let me guess, you are referring to television, right? My TV died a natural death back in the late 1990's, and I never replaced it. I espouse that everybody should stop watching TV, and get a good hobby. Things would be much improved for the world, I think.

Anyways, no I don't think that a box to photograph is a form of oppression or censorship. I think that it puts into perspective, what is the subject of the photograph? Since you've gone off on a tangent, I'm guessing that my reasoning is good. The subject is what is being represented on the final print. I make a point of the final print, because Jerry Uelsman does some interesting stuff using multiple negatives to achieve whatever it is on his final print.

The difference between photographing the scene in the box (creative interaction with a tool) and sitting and staring at the TV is that one requires a high degree of thought and the other doesn't. Making unique photographs takes some ingenuity. I bet that Frank Petronio could even make his hot babe photos using just that scene. It would take more work, but I bet he'd do it.

And still, what is the subject? In a mass of 5000 prints, it is still the ball in the box. Not the photographers.

No, I was referring to your box.

mdm
3-Aug-2010, 22:20
I wonder if wading in here is a smart idea or not...;)

The subject I photograph is light.


Then I take that pattern of light and transform it into a print that expresses my limited understanding of their reality...and my relationship with that reality.

Vaughn

Precisely the point. The print 'expresses my limited understanding of their reality...and my relationship with that reality". The print is an expresion of your self, therefore you, or your self, is the subject of the photograph. The painter, posted earlier, clearly was the subject in his own painting. Why is photography any different.

This is a valid way of looking at photograph.

Heroique
3-Aug-2010, 22:24
I wonder if wading in here is a smart idea or not... ;)


Maybe we should have kept “the bar” closed (from post #3).

But since you’re coming in, just be ready to duck!

Actually, this is fun. :p I’m learning a lot here (“Indexical,” “Maya,” etc.) that I missed in school since I was always in the principal’s office.

And before the scuffles subside & the dust settles, I think plenty more about film + “reality” is on the way.

I’m stickin’ around! (At least until dawn.)

mdm
3-Aug-2010, 22:39
I’m stickin’ around!

I'm not. I have reality to deal with.

rdenney
4-Aug-2010, 15:42
I do not photograph, nor even see, people, chairs, rocks, trees -- I only see and capture the light that reflects off of them.

Seeing only the light reflected by objects does not disprove reality. It only forces us to consider that what we see may not describe the entire reality. Optical illusions are tricks that play on that fact.

It is easy to get mystical and believe that light is some spiritual medium that may or may not reflect realistically off objects. But in daily experience, light behaves in ways that we can predict, especially if we consider multiple viewpoints. And we can analyze objects in many ways other than by looking at them in order to determine what they are. Believing that all of that is an illusion seems to me purposed navel-gazing.

What started this discussion was the notion that photographs should represent truth. At best, they represent fact, but fact must be explained before truth can be drawn from it. And we believe that a photo is factual only if it is represented as such by someone whose authority we trust (that can, of course, be implicit). That trust can be violated, of course, which makes us rightly skeptical. But I don't think that should cause us to question the very existence of the objects we can analyze on the basis of the light that reflects from them.

For example, I was touring a chemical lab today that is used to conduct research into highway materials. The bits of asphalt and concrete being tested can, when sitting on a table over there, be evaluated only by the light that reflects from them. But we can also walk over and touch them. We can put them into an XRF machine and bounce X-rays off of them to see their signature fluorescence, and know precisely what elements are present in them. We can weigh them and measure the gravitational force exerted on them. We can dissolve them in chemicals. And on and on. After all that analysis, we can determine that all they all pointed to the same conclusion: chunks of asphalt and concrete. We can still question their reality as a mystical level, but at a physical level, doing so would not be going with the percentages.

But even for people who believe that light bounces off things predictably enough to ensure their existence, it does not necessarily provide a complete description, and two-dimensional photos are actually rather limited in their ability to describe fact. Video, being four-dimensional, is more likely to provide a thorough description, but it still requires that we trust the process by which the video was made. A few minutes before visiting the chemistry lab, I visited a roadway visualization simulator. Its realism was excellent--good enough to suspend disbelief while viewing it (and good enough to give me motion sickness:( ). But it was not good enough so that suspension of disbelief was automatic, though that really is only a matter of technology. The biggest problem with believing it though was the walk through narrow corridors into a room with hard walls within which stacks of computers were hooked up to the shell of a car, with a big curved screen wrapped around it.

Thus, we are skeptical, and that's why we apply tests from our experience. It's why we don't trust photographs to show fact unless that fact is certified by someone we trust, and it's why a photograph by itself doesn't provide that certification.

Back in my architecture-school days, we studied the effects of light on shapes. All art students start with a still life of a cylinder, a cone, and a ball. One exercise will be to render the shapes of the objects using only black ink, without using shades of gray. The skill being taught was how to see how the light reflected from a subject revealed its nature, and then (separately) the skill of revealing that nature using difficult tools. Photographs are an easy tool, and the result is often statically two-dimensional because it does not force us to see. So, as photographers, it doesn't matter whether what we are looking at is real or not. What matters is how we express it. We can choose to be deliberately unrealistic, and the most obvious way of doing that is to remove color.

We should not, however, confuse expression with subject matter, or reality with truth.

Rick "confusion is our most important product" Denney

Heroique
4-Aug-2010, 16:19
Seeing only the light reflected by objects does not disprove reality. It only forces us to consider that what we see may not describe the entire reality. [...]

Rick, quite astonishing – your first two sentences come close to summarizing Plato’s famous story about the cave (Republic, chapter VII), even if the Athenian used shadows where you use light. His point being that, in the end, there is a reality that we can all point to and agree upon.

I enjoyed the rest of your post, too.

Maybe it really is true that European philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato…

Vaughn
4-Aug-2010, 21:16
Back again -- sorry for the delay, but I was out photographing today under the redwoods. I know, I know...odd behavior for a photograher...;)

All is an illusion -- yes, I am a naval-gazer at heart. I do not worship light, but if I were put something up on an alter, light would be a prime candidate.

Photographs can represent truth...I do not know if they can represent Truth. That is a tough question that I do not have the answer. It is the old Zen problem -- the mind can not know the Mind.

It is fun to fiddle with words, as long as the music we are playing is not too distracting.


We should not, however, confuse expression with subject matter, or reality with truth.

I like this. It reminded me of another old Zen saying about not confusing the finger for the moon. Basically, if someone is pointing out the moon to you, don't mistake the finger for the moon...or the dogma for the dharma...or in this case, the perceived reality for Truth.

Yours truly, Vaughn

rdenney
5-Aug-2010, 14:55
Rick, quite astonishing – your first two sentences come close to summarizing Plato’s famous story about the cave...

I'm pleased that he agreed with me.

Rick ":)" Denney

rdenney
5-Aug-2010, 14:59
Photographs can represent truth...I do not know if they can represent Truth.

Fact: what.
Truth: how.
Truth with a capital "T": why.

Is that what you mean? If so, then I agree. Photographs can represent (as in, illustrate) truth. But they cannot establish it, at least not by themselves.

Rick "who'd rather be photographing redwoods" Denney

Vaughn
5-Aug-2010, 15:53
Close enough, Rick.

Heroique
5-Aug-2010, 23:56
Close enough, Rick.

I’m not so sure it’s “close enough” for me, but it is getting closer…

Below, I’ve chosen three parts from Rick’s hypnotizing post for a little clarification – from Rick or others – to help us capture that ever-elusive photo subject, “reality.” Yes, we can do it. In other words, I think there’s some good, clean fun left in this photo-philosophical thread…


…And we can analyze objects in many ways other than by looking at them in order to determine what they are…

Ah, analysis – that’s the Western bias, I think, that Vaughn resists. If I read Brian Miller’s earlier thoughts correctly, so does he.

Now, I may have a little more sympathy w/ analysis than others (and I suspect Maris does too), but I do have to ask: What makes an instrument of analysis (e.g., your “XRF machine,” etc.) – no matter how many of these instruments we use on a subject, no matter how sophisticated they are – a more reliable interpreter of “what something is” than by our looking at it and seeing the light rays bounce off? Is it the more reliable operator looking at the instrument’s more reliably calibrated scale? Maybe the more reliable technician collecting more reliable data? Or perhaps a more reliable scientist interpreting this more reliable data? I recognize these well-meaning people may not always be “looking” at bouncing light rays as they carry on their important work, but come now, aren’t they “looking” nonetheless? And what about all those “parts” they’re looking at? Are all the parts they’re analyzing really the same thing as the whole thing they started with?

(I know these questions may not come naturally to those under the spell of Western analysis – and I fall into that group – especially in view of the material benefits it can provide, and the moral conscience it can sharpen.)


...And we believe that a photo is factual only if it is represented as such by someone whose authority we trust (that can, of course, be implicit). That trust can be violated, of course, which makes us rightly skeptical…

I’d like to hear more about this “authority” we trust whose representation of a photo as “factual” is the only way to generate our belief that it is. (And I’d like to meet him.) Let’s say it’s someone who has no intention to “violate” our trust – one whose credentials enjoy an iron-clad reputation for trustworthiness. Still, can this ideal authority ever enjoy such perfect knowledge about the facts of a photo to warrant the only way we can believe in those facts? If they can, is it because they have access to an even higher “Authority” – note the capital “A” – to whom we have none? Or maybe this authoritative photographer used special instruments of analysis? Makes me think one should be more than “rightly skeptical” about this person.


...But in daily experience, light behaves in ways that we can predict, especially if we consider multiple viewpoints…

Perhaps this is my most pressing question of all: Once one “predicts” all the ways light can behave, and considers all the multiple viewpoints that are possible, which one (or how many) of these behaviors and viewpoints does one select, or emphasize, to make a point about reality? Do instruments of analysis have anything to do with the choice?

(P.S. Where’s Maris?)

;)

Vaughn
6-Aug-2010, 01:23
Ah, analysis – that’s the Western bias, I think, that Vaughn resists.

You nailed it, though the bias is not limited to Western thought. Once one begins the attempt to define "reality", one enters a realm that words do not work very well, since the words, and thoughts behind them, are based on our perception of reality, not on reality itself (the mind can not know the Mind).

I only enough of Hindu, Buddhist and Zen thought to be totally confused...which is an okay state to be in, as far as I am concerned. For me, it is better than fooling myself into thinking I actually know what reality is. I can still operate in the realm of Western thought quite well.

I know we can test the components of concrete to determine the strength and characteristics of the concrete, but all the testing tells us nothing of the reality in which the concrete exists. And we do not need to know that in order to build a Hoover Dam.


I’d like to hear more about this “authority” we trust whose representation of a photo as “factual” is the only way to generate our belief that it is.

Of course, the "authority" in court is the one who swears that they took the photo at a particular place at a particular time, and that no trickery was done to mislead us. Watkins was asked, in a trial involving a mine that he had photographed back in the 1800's, why he picked that particular place to put the camera. He answered, "It was the best possible view, your honor." I have always liked that quote.

Your pressing question must wait -- I must go develop a couple carbon prints as the 30 minutes of transfer time has passed...

Vaughn

mdm
6-Aug-2010, 01:31
We are defined as people by our reality. For some people reality is objective, they accept their surroundings at face value, and for some reality is subjective, for them objective reality is filtered through the value system. People are extraverted or introverted, not in the sense of liking or disliking people, but depending on how they relate to external stimulus.

So if you want to argue about reality, perhaps you should be talking about objective reality and subjective reality. I supose the pure sciences are objective and the social sciences, such as history and dare I mention it, art, are subjective. I maintain that photography is inherently subjective. It is interpretive. The operators of the instrument are not capable of producing objectivly repeatable results (the whole point of it is to not produce objectivly repeatable photographs). Photography is not the same as doing a titration in a lab. Photography is not sensiometry. Sensiometry is objective, photography is not. Even forensic photography is interpretive. Picking up a camera is not the same as operating a MRI machine.

Just for interest, are the photographs made by Hubble subjective or objective? I would expect the humans on Earth are pointing the cameras and processing the image data into something viewable.

mdm
6-Aug-2010, 02:09
"Women are the only reality"

There you have the truth in 5 words. :)

Note that this is a quote.

Brian C. Miller
7-Aug-2010, 01:34
I like pretty pictures.

You'll just have to do with the ugly long-exposure test I just did! :eek:

No, I did not have a wooden ball on hand, just a lemon that had dried into a dessicated state while sitting in my fridge's butter tray. But since this is in the "Image Sharing & Discussion" forum, we are now on topic with one image!! Yeeee haaaaw!

Now, in this image I claim that it is a dessicated lemon, and not fresh. Can someone tell if I am lying or telling the truth? I claim that the lens was left open for between 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Can that be refuted? I claim that I used Plus-X Pan expired in September 1985 (OK, so I thought it was a bit older in the other post) and exposed using my Graflex Super Graphic with the bellows at maximum extension at f32. I could have used a digital camera! How can any statement be asserted as true or false based on a cruddy .jpg?

What is the spirit of the photograph? Is the lemon truly alone? Does it represent something else other than a lemon? Does it represent the lack of a wooden ball, which in turn represents the lack of something else, like yet more unfathomed BS?

Does the lemon represent me, or do I represent the lemon? I think neither. The lemon exists on its own apart from me. Under the right conditions, this mummified fruit will outlast me, possibly by orders of magnitude. I can interact with it, but our existences are seperate.

Does the image represent me? No. If the photograph were one of Cindy Sherman's productions, then yes, I would definitely agree that the image represents the photographer.

Literally, we think that we see the image of a lemon in the corner of a cardboard box. We think that this image has not been deliberately modified. Some people may think that this is a significant photograph, especially if it is printed and stuck in a frame on a wall. And if this image was found on a glass plate among glass plates of Yosemite, it might be hailed as being made by a famous photographer and offered up for the sum of many thousands of dollars.

But my reality is that I wanted to post something to this thread to keep it on the forum topic.


Nothing we experience is "reality". All our senses feed our brains which creates its own version, its copy, of reality. As the Hindus and Buddhists would say (and perhaps the Christian mystics), it is all Maya, all illusion.

Christianity has some pretty explicit exhortations about detachment and release, but the main books don't mention the word illusion. There is probably something in the scads and scads of commentary down through the last couple of millenium, though.

And how does that tie in with photography? The shutter release, of course! We release the shutter, to create a chemical change on some gunk inside of a box. Then, depending on the camera in question (digital or chemical) we do things which eventually results in a photograph. If the image is good then we retain it, and if it is bad, we release it, and do the process again. What is the point to this paragraph? We are constantly releasing. We don't know beforehand if we will be satisfied with what we have created. And even after we have created the "final" print, we don't really know its value until others interact with it, until the image creates thoughts within their minds. And if the print becomes damaged in the future or we figure a better interpretation of the original image, we must release it yet again, and create it anew.

Photography is full of illusions. How many manipulated images are there? Untold millions? And I'm refering to chemical-based photography. Just because there is a print, that doesn't mean that there was a corresponding scene. Most of us play "spot the pixel" game, or look at some old photo and comment how a ghost in the picture isn't real. So is there always an indexical relationship between the final print and anything else? No, just ask Jerry Uelsmann, who is in Florida, and has one camera and six enlargers.

Now I'm going to wander off to bed, having finally kept the discussion on track within the forum topic.

rdenney
11-Aug-2010, 05:11
Ah, analysis – that’s the Western bias, I think, that Vaughn resists. If I read Brian Miller’s earlier thoughts correctly, so does he.

We are born with both halves of a brain--one half that feels and the other half that thinks. We can't divorce the two halves without imposing other problems, but one side can be allowed to dominate the other. I live my life in an analytical world, but then I'm an engineer and that's what I'm paid to do. When I make photographs or music, both halves are engaged. If I play a note out of tune or with inappropriate articulation, that all-too-common fact is something I note analytically, in a process running parallel to but otherwise independent of my focus on the emotion of the musical line. The goal for musicians is to gain such technical mastery that the analysis becomes sub-conscious, allowing full mental headroom for simply feeling and expression the emotion. Note that without the technical mastery, that expression is hindered and perhaps even blocked altogether. It is not blocked because of analysis, but rather because of the lack of analysis done in preparation for the expression. Da Vinci, as an artist, performed deep analysis of his subjects, and when the analysis was complete, he made art that we still admire many centuries later.

If that approach is uniquely Western (I don't think it is), then so be it. I'm a Western man, being true to my own cultural heritage.


Now, I may have a little more sympathy w/ analysis than others (and I suspect Maris does too), but I do have to ask: What makes an instrument of analysis (e.g., your “XRF machine,” etc.) – no matter how many of these instruments we use on a subject, no matter how sophisticated they are – a more reliable interpreter of “what something is” than by our looking at it and seeing the light rays bounce off?

It is not more reliable. It is more precise. But an XRF machine is really just a different way of seeing. It beams X-rays at a subject until it fluoresces, and a spectral analysis of the fluorescence reveals the component elements. So, we analyze, say, a piece of polished brass, partly by its color. If it is reddish, it has more copper. If it is yellowish, it has less. We are analyzing the brass, mostly sub-consciously and probably entirely empirically, by evaluating the spectrum of visible light bouncing off of it. We make photographs using infrared film to expose a different aspect of a subject. I have seen photographs made using ultraviolet light that involves considerable visible fluorescence. The XRF machine, and other machines like it, are doing the same thing, but they are looking at the object in different "light".

Thus, we are actually seeing a narrow band of the energy reflected from objects, and other aspects of their nature are revealed by exposing them to different frequencies of energy.

Those methods, formal or not, reveal aspects of a subject's physical nature. I don't mind using the word reality in place of physical nature, but I also don't mind if others prefer not to make that equation. The reason I don't mind is that it doesn't affect what I perceive. And it is orthogonal to what I feel about a subject--that part runs on a parallel and independent process, just as with music. That aspect is what I am always trying to improve. It is not analysis that holds me back, but the importance analysis has in my way of thinking. Again, so be it.

So, in the end, whether something is real or not beyond its physical nature is a matter of spiritual faith, and that is not the topic at hand. A news photographer is not charged with photographing what cannot be perceived--that is the realm of art. A news photographer is charged with photographing what can be explicitly perceived, and in a way that is consistent with standards of perception. I think news photographs should stick with clearly illustrating something's physical nature, as visible in plain light.


I’d like to hear more about this “authority” we trust whose representation of a photo as “factual” is the only way to generate our belief that it is. (And I’d like to meet him.) Let’s say it’s someone who has no intention to “violate” our trust – one whose credentials enjoy an iron-clad reputation for trustworthiness. Still, can this ideal authority ever enjoy such perfect knowledge about the facts of a photo to warrant the only way we can believe in those facts? If they can, is it because they have access to an even higher “Authority” – note the capital “A” – to whom we have none? Or maybe this authoritative photographer used special instruments of analysis? Makes me think one should be more than “rightly skeptical” about this person.

An authority is one whose assertions are trusted by those charged with evaluating those assertions. No more; no less. Authorities are wrong all the time, as are their evaluators. That is why all such authoritative assertions are subject to further analysis and confirmation. A photograph illustrating a news story comes with an implicit assurance of authority, though that is one that I find untrustworthy often enough to cast the whole idea of implicit photographic authority into question. When a reporter asserts, in words, the events illustrated by a photograph, then I trust it more, simply because words are easier to evaluate. There is no absolute authority in this physical world. I do believe in absolute authority, but again that delves into spiritual topics not the subject of this thread.


Perhaps this is my most pressing question of all: Once one “predicts” all the ways light can behave, and considers all the multiple viewpoints that are possible, which one (or how many) of these behaviors and viewpoints does one select, or emphasize, to make a point about reality? Do instruments of analysis have anything to do with the choice?

We employ instruments of analytical precision to answer questions about their physical nature that are relevant to what we are trying to achieve. We develop such machines because we have learned, through analysis and experimentation, that our eyes and fingers are not sufficiently precise to answer those questions. Or, that our prior multiple views and observational modes give conflicting evidence of that physical nature. Again, I'm happy with the equation of physical nature with reality, in the context of this discussion.

We may learn something about physical reality that changes our spiritual world view, but more often, we interpret physical reality in the context of that world view. Even if that world view is specifically void, as it is with some belief systems, that is still a filter through which we evaluate physical nature. But that crosses the line into navel-gazing, it seems to me. Introspection is what we do to consider how we are reacting to the physical nature of the subject before us, and that leads to an emotional feeling that we may try to express artistically. That introspection is not evaluating the nature of the subject, but rather our emotional response to it. I try not to confuse the two.

Rick "noting that words are more precise than pictures, but it takes a thousand of them" Denney