Film and “footprints”

[Heroique]

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.

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”?

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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]

I like pretty pictures.

[Heroique]

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.

[Brian C. Miller]

I like pretty pictures.

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

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.

[Brian C. Miller]

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]

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

[mdm]

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]

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. 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]

I’m stickin’ around!

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

[rdenney]

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