Sorry Jude,

I missed your posting in response to mine, (and, of course you may cut 
in). I'll try to respond now.

Jude, you said: 

>"Authenticity is for me, related to provenence, the source of a thing, it's 
lineage."

Authenticity and originality (truth, reality, etc.) were not issues 
(values?) that I had sought to draw upon in my comment about the 
difference as I perceive it (and this is only one among many, or course) 
between colour and B&W in photographs. Although having read yours and 
JMC's responses, I can see that it is problematic to make claims in 
relation to a referent (esp. 'ultimate' referent) and, to claim NOT to 
have engaged the issue of authenticity, originality...

So what I'm trying to do now is think of ways in which it might be 
plausible to strip from the notion of referent, all such 'values' or 
properties as originality, authenticity, truth.

I said in a posting to JMC, that 

... a color photograph seems closer to the referent than its 
black-and-white counterpart. But I don't know that I'd necessarily make 
the link to realism [authenticity, originality, truth] in that context.

I ask whether 'closer to referent' is necessarily tied to realism, 
resemblance: whether it is possible to consider proximity and distance in 
a way that does not automatically defer to notions of realism, 
authenticity, originality, or pictorial resemblance, verisimilitude. I 
think in this case such terms are employed as a 'measure' of the 
referent's impact on the sense of the experience we have in looking at a 
photographic image of something, and I think that's a problem. 

In most common-sense senses of real, authentic, original (etc.) such 
terms have no independent meaning - they are only meaningful when 'in 
use', i.e., when measuring something's bearing on the ideas/responses we 
associate with it). However, we often use these terms as though they are 
actual properties of things (things depicted).

Jude, you also say:

>"In a sense, I think you are describing versimilitude (the appearance or 
semblance
>of truth or reality,)in the context of a performance art. Realism in art is 
judged
>by how convincing a work of art is in it's imitation of the real) which is
>certainly an important question, but not quite the same question as which 
work of
>art will sponsor a meaningful experience experience, which I think is what 
you were
>getting at in describingthe juxtaposition of BW and color".

I agree that my issue is with how an image might "sponser a meaningful 
experience experience" [sic], and that imitation of the real (access to 
authenticity, etc.) is not necessarily the source of such experiences. 
But, I don't think I am talking about verisimilitude or realism here 
though: I still contend that at some level, perhaps semantic or 
conceptual or intellectual, poetic, our sense of connection to an 
(ostensible) referent in a photo - which we might regard as an empathy 
connection - is affected by the modality, the means by which that 
referent is 'given' to us pictorially: that is, the medium and its 
tropes, inferences, readings. For me this is not a connection determined 
by how 'real' or authentic or truth-based I consider that depicted 
referent to be in its relation to what I know of or beleive about it 
(i.e., what it is 'really' like, which then would be a question of 
resemblance and verisimilitude). 

In fact, just following a train of thought for a moment, I would say that 
for me, the understanding that I seek about (photographic and digital) 
images - the realities that a given image might yield for me in my 
experience of it - would be the kind found in pictoriality itself: how 
things appear in the image would be the 'truth' of the depicted referent, 
because the depiction is the real thing, not its referent. In this 
analysis, what do we do with the referent? It's still there, but here our 
concern is not with 'what' (what it really is like) but 'how' (how do we 
respond to/experience its precise appearance like this in this image.) 

So authenticity (etc.) would not be a sought-after value to be 
established by reference to something (ontologically) existing 'outside' 
or beyond the frame - i.e., an 'ultimate referent'. In a sense the 
referent is not meaningful except as it appears in the image, so whether 
it appears in colour or B&W becomes meaningful, and thus 'colour' and/or 
'B&W' become meaning-laden also. But this would again assert the medium, 
the technology, as "the referent within the frame" in my analysis which, 
if so, would not permit me to make my original observation about the 
difference between colour and B&W and their respective mediations of the 
"referent beyond the frame". Hmm... 

I'll leave it there for now, and look forward to hearing more!

Regards,

Rose.


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