ADDITIONAL RESEARCH FOR ESSAY

This is a “light touch” on essays/books, where I have reread and made notes that will be of help to me for assignment 1.

CAMERA LUCIDA ROLAND BARTHES (1981)

This book written by French theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes, is both an investigation into how a photograph affects the viewer (photographer or spectator), as well as being a reflection on the death of his mother.

Camera lucida was an optical apparatus used by artists, which facilitated drawing an object through a prism, with one eye on the model and one on the paper. Barthes asserts that a photograph is more like this than the camera obscura; it cannot be penetrated because it is flat, and the power of the image prevents penetration. Barthes shares his belief that photography cannot be reduced to codes of language, how it acts emotionally on the body as well as the mind.

He says that the photograph is the object of three practices/intentions: to do, to undergo, to look. The operator is the photographer, the spectator is us and others, and the object photographed is the target or spectrum (Barthes, 1981:10).

He develops his concepts of studium and punctum:

“What I feel about these photographs derive from an average affect”, and a French word for general human interestexists in Latin, stadium, “It is by stadium that I am interested in so many photographs” (Barthes, 1981:26).

Punctum is a Latin word for wound, prick, mark, or a puncture point, “a photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me” is poignant to me (Barthes, 1981:27). However, if such a puncture is deliberately placed by the photographer, then he says they don’t cause punctum “the detail which interests me is not…intentional” (Barthes, 1981:47). He also describes punctum as “a kind of subtle beyond” (Barthes, 1981:59), without which images are relatively inert to Barthes.

In his view by recognising the stadium the spectator is identifying the photographer’s intentions and does allow an understanding of the operator (Barthes, 1981:27).  

“The stadium is ultimately always coded, the punctum is not” (Barthes, 1981:51). He believed that punctum should occur by chance rather than by creative composition. He suggests that you should shutting your eyes to let the image speak in silence, without considering technique, reality, art etc, “to allow the detail to rise of its own effect” (Barthes, 1981:55).

If the punctum creates what Barthes refers to as a blind field, a subjectivity outside of the image, then I would ask whether the photographer can control the interpretation of the image? P57

Barthes view was that the key gesture of the operator is to surprise with something rare, something the eye wouldn’t normally see, by perspective contortion, luck, or technique. It can be that there is a defiance in making it obvious as to why a photograph is taken, I would call this ambiguity. Barthes asks do these make photography notable, or in reverse does this make what is photographed notable? (Barthes, 1981:34).

I like the expression Barthes uses as the expression of a truth, “The air” (Barthes, 1981:109) whichis not present when photographing an object, but it is for a person apparently. Barthes talks about the air of a face as unanalysable, “the luminous shadow which accompanies the body” Barthes, 1981:110).

He writes of how society tries to “tame” photography. One way is by making photography into art, which he says is possible when its “noeme” essence, is no longer present, the other is to generalise the image and make it banal (Barthes, 1981:118).

I am interested in theories about realism, Barthes says tame photography has relative realism, when tempered by aesthetic or empirical habits, however he calls photography “mad” if the realism is absolute, saying the choice is his or now ours, (Barthes, 1981:119).

Reference:

Barthes, R. (1981) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. (1999): Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

WAYS OF SEEING JOHN BERGER (1972)

This book was based on a television programme by the same name, and has become an important text on art criticism, which puts photography in the context of western art. These are the points I now find particularly relevant to my assignment 1 work:

Berger explains that seeing comes before words, then words are used to explain what we see. We never look at just one thing, but always in relation to ourselves and “things” and “the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled” (Berger et al, 1972:7). “When we “see” a landscape, we situate ourselves in it” (Berger et al, 1972:11).

As well as personal experience, our seeing is also affected by history and culture, and how this gives meaning to our lives; this in turn changes the way we see things. “The photographer’s way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject” (Berger et al, 1972:10), but also appreciating an image depends on the viewers way of seeing. Therefore, Berger asserts that art needs approaching in a holistic way, that relates to the photographer’s and viewers experiences.

Reference:

Berger, J. et al. (1972) Ways of Seeing. (s.l.): British Broadcasting Corporation.

Understanding a Photograph (Berger, 2013)

Understanding a Photograph is a collection of writings on photographs presented by John Berger. Withing this is his essay on understanding a photograph.

Berger says that photographs are evidence of human choice, the result of a photographer’s decision that this is worth recording (loc 434). He says that at the simplest level the message decoded means “I have decided that seeing this is worth recording” (loc 434), furthermore that the important time is the moment of photographing. He explains that the difference between memorable and banal images is how well the photographer explains the message (loc 434), “photography is the process of rendering observation self-conscious” (loc 434). Berger believes that an effective photograph is one that has a “quantum of truth” (loc 458) essentially some ambiguity.

“Every photograph is in fact a means of testing, confirming and constructing a total view of reality” (loc 469)

The introduction is by Geoff Dyer and sets out how Berger was influenced by the writings of Sontag and Barthes. Whilst Barthes was influenced by Sontag and Sontag by Barthes. Also, all of them were influenced by Walter Benjamin, and interestingly that for all four writers’ photography was not their specialism. Dyer speculates whether Berger’s fascination with photography was with how its meaning can best be drawn out (Berger, 2013: loc 140), a goal shared by Barthes, what is the essence of photography? (Berger, 2013: loc 140)

Reference:

Berger, J. (2013) Understanding a Photograph. [Kindle edition] From Amazn.co.uk (accessed on 25.11.21).

Seeing photographically Edward Weston (1943)

Weston is just one photographer who believed that photography could reveal emotional insights. He recognised that the challenge in photography isn’t using the technology but understanding its capabilities so that he can translate the elements into what he wants to share). Weston goes o to list the variables that a photographers can use to achieve his composition: “the position of the camera, his camera angle, or the focal length of his lens” (Weston, 1943:173). He also comments that few photographers master their medium but are instead controlled by it. Weston talks about using simple equipment and considering the whole process. On composition again he espouses simplicity, not following set rules, to enable revealing photographic sight.

Weston suggests that photography does enable deep looking at subjects and presenting their reality. Most interesting to me is his assertion that photography can “reveal the essence of what lies before his lens” with clear insight (Weston, 1943:175).

Reference:

Weston, E (1943) Seeing Photographically in The Encyclopaedia of Photography, vol 18 (1964) At: https://cupdf.com/document/seeing-photographically-edward-weston.html (Accessed 24/11/2021).

Liz Wells The Photography reader

Well’s introduction to the meaning and interpretation of photography (Wells, 2019:123) gave me a helpful overview of the idea of semiotics. How the movement grew from its emergence by Saussure in 1916, and development by Barthes and Pierce in the 1950-60s, from an examination of non-verbal communication, to how meaning can be drawn. Initially semiotics proposed that the image positioned the reader, with no allowance for meaning and interpretation. Later Barthes in “the death of the author” and other writers looked at the effects of individuals and social groups on meaning, to the point where “the image maker was merely an agent for the recirculation of conventional imagery” (Wells,2019:125). Wells points out that now semiotics is often used in conjunction with other disciplines and less rigidly.

Wells shares the viewpoints of other theorists such Walker, Jussim and Edwards, that meaning isn’t fixed in an image, but is arrived at by our own experiences and how we encounter an image. Reading this led me to the theories of Ian Walker, see below.

Reference:

Wells, L. (2019) The Photography Reader: History and Theory. (s.l.): Routledge.

Ian Walker. Looking through the picture plane: On looking into photographs (2005)

Walker offers another way of reading and interpreting through the ways in which our eyes enter the picture; what is going on in the space around us. He says that “reading the space” – or reading into it- is a problem of visual perception” (Walker, 2005: 15). How we interpret spatial distance in images, through the gradients of texture, overlapping objects and so forth is one part of visual perception. However not only where and how an image is presented but also the influence of our memory of our own lived experience, perception, memory, and imagination affects our visual perception Ultimately, he asks, is a picture an object in itself or is it a window onto the world? You could argue that a photograph is both of those.

Reference:

Walker, I. et al. (2005) Image & Imagination: Le Mois de la Photo À Montréal 2005. (s.l.): McGill-Queen’s Univ.Press.

The Ontology of the Photographic Image’ (Bazin, 1960)

Andre Bazin was a French intellectual and theorist (1918-58), who was interested in the relationship between photography and reality. Ontology is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. It studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality. 

In this essay Bazin outlines the changes in western painting from spiritual expression to imitation of the world, with the advent of the camera obscura in the 15^th century giving the artist the technology to “create the illusion of 3-dimensional space within which things appeared to exist as our eyes in reality see them” (Bazin, 1960:6). He goes on to say that painting was then torn between creating reality and creating a spiritual symbolic reality. These he calls two different phenomena which great artists have always been able to combine, and yet the question of realism had been more easily satisfied with film and photography.

Bazin explains that the thought that photography is objective was linked to the French term for lens “objectif”. The personality of the photographer was thought only to intervene with the selection of the photographed object, thought to be a lesser influence than the role of the painter.

However, Bazin sets out that “by the power of photography, the natural image of a world that we neither know nor can know, nature at last does more than imitate art: she imitates the artist” (Bazin, 1960:8). More so he says that photography can surpass art in creative powers, evidenced by surrealist photographers who combine the mechanical and aesthetic effect of photography on our imaginations. Bazin believes that photography is highly creative as it produces images that are both reality and hallucinatory, in a surrealist fashion.

Whilst Bazin acknowledges the physical relationship between the object photographed and the photograph, as the image separates the object from the time, space, place that it exists in. Therefore, the photograph is not exactly reality, nor is it imaginary. This is gives lots of possibilities to photography. The idea of photography as a meeting of the real and the imaginary will work well for me in my photography.

Reference:

Bazin, A. and Gray, H. (1960) ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’ In: Film Quarterly 13 (4) pp.4–9. At: https://www-jstor-org.ucreative.idm.oclc.org/stable/1210183?seq=6 (accessed 1/12/21).

NOTES ON LANDSCAPE GENRE from Photography a critical introduction (Wells, 2015:344).

Modern landscape photography was associated with American Photographers such as, Ansel Adams, Minor White, and Edward Weston who believed in pure photographic seeing. These modernist photographers emphasised the spiritual and aesthetic aspects of landscape.

Postmodern landscape photography engages with social economics and politics as well as aesthetics. Landscape can be used with content and aesthetics coming together to tell a story.

Robert Adams in Truth in Landscape suggested the best landscape pictures involve geography, autobiography, and metaphor -aesthetics and the cultural resonances (Adams, 1996: 14). Wells suggests this is a good starting place to critique landscape photography.

References:

Adams, R. (1989) Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defence of Traditional Values. (s.l.): Aperture.

Wells, L. (2015) Photography: A Critical Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge.

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