Photography: a deeper meaning
Camera Lucida shows the reader the deeper meaning of the camera. It tells us that photography tells the real time and does not lie. The "Winter Garden" photograph makes the viewer feel their own death just by looking at that photo. Paintings just don't possess the same reality that a photograph can. Photographs just show one point in time. They are merely a pose and not a process or concurrence of events like that of the film. Photo vs film is shown on page 78: "The pose is swept away and denied by the continuous series of images". A photo is a living image but can show a dead image. It can be a living image of a dead thing. A simple photograph can only show one point in time. It can not tell past or future but only the situation at that current time (page 82: "The photograph does not call up the past". Photographs tell the truth and are a form of evidence: two quotes from page 87 in the book which highlight these are: "It does not invent; it is authentication itself" and "Every photograph is a certificate of presence". The difference between life and death for a camera is just a simple click away. The actual characteristics of the photograph material are lifelike: the paper fades, weakens, vanishes just like all life forms. Headings or titles to photos may tell us more about the picture and its past, present and future than just the picture itself.
Labels: tom s
posted by tomsproats at
10:31 AM
2 Comments:
It is interesting that you bring up some of the physical qualities in a photograph. A reason why we consider a photograph "dead" definitely depends on some of the physical aspects I think. It is more vulnerable to physical aging or damage, whereas a film seems more secure.
The notion that a photograph is "dead", connects to the idea that this caputred moment is framed, forever, however, inanimately. We're just watching a certain temporal glimpse, and the rest must be retrived from our memory, which only adds to the idea that a moment in a photograph is just from the past.
An interesting distinction with what both of you are saying might be advances in technologies, dealing with both mediums. It is true that photographs fade and age, but old film reels also wore away with age, and could be destroyed with time. Yet, today, movies, as well as photographs, can be all on the computer. Pictures can be taken by a digital camera, and transfered to a computer, never to physically decay with time. Movies are the same way.
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