The Chemical rays of light

[ROL]

Against my better instincts, I was up early at Zabriskie Point in DV last Saturday morning, along with the throngs of lensed hopefuls. The only thing that differentiated me practically from the others, at that moment, was that I was the only one with a view camera, and I'm reasonably certain, the only one who didn't take a picture. I wish I knew what any of that meant. Probably just that I couldn't sleep and was glad to be back in DV again.

[dsphotog]

Rays of light always look better after the viewer has ingested the correct chemicals....

[Heroique]

Indexicality, shmindexicality.

I'm curious if x-ray machine photographs are indexical – let's say of one's cracked skull.

This is beginning to sound like literary criticism.

The bad Derrida kind.

[rdenney]

Just because you can define a word such as indexical, it doesn't mean its useful. I would agree that an image drawn on a camera obscure is not a photograph. However, there is a clear distinction between a capture process and a printing process. There are many printing processes, some that degrade the image somewhat, some change its color from what existed, etc. I would say that there is no such thing as an indexical print, by your definition, the spectral response is not exact. In fact, it has to be inexact for the person to believe that they are seeing something "real."

There are also inconsistencies in the capture step. Years ago someone put things on top of a scanner and let it go... They were quite interesting. Harumph, not a photograph, many here would say. But then one has to consider how different it is, or isn't, from a digital camera. Now its not about indexicality, but about a lens? But then you eliminate everyone who doesn't use a lens, like the pinhole folks, who surely want to be considered photographers.

Nothing about indexicality requires a lens. A pinhole can project an image just as easily as a lens can.

And did you not read that I said all photographs have some indexical elements and some non-indexical elements? And that people call it a photograph if the indexical part dominates the outlines of the image? You are agreeing with me, even if disagreeably.

There has been a difference between capture technologies and display technologies for most of photography, with the (non-digital) exceptions being stuff like Polaroids and transparencies. With Polaroid one-step prints, the print process is the capture process, as it is with in-camera paper positives such as those made by photo kiosks. And transparencies are not always printed--projection was a common display method. Yet they are all photographs. Making a picture of small items using a scanner (or, earlier, a copy machine, even when they were non-digital) challenges the definitions, but it turns out they still work. Those scanner sensors and copy machines do project an image, and the picture is made by the subject, as influenced by the choice of technology. Just as with a Velvia slide or a black-and-white negative and print. Most if not all scanners use a lens or array of lenses to do so, though it doesn't really matter that they do. Most people call them photographs, and someone doing so is not upsetting the cosmic order (or threatening the extinguishment of the sacred flame).

I've read books about photography written over a century and a half, and the definition most people use (which I summarized, using "indexical" as a shorthand term of art), seems to work pretty consistently for all of them.

Rick "who doesn't mind a term of art if it makes the discussion more efficiently understood" Denney