I refer to the interesting comments by Garry MacLennan on reading
photographs and documentary film in terms of Heidegger's concept of
alethia. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't alethia related to the
unconcealing of being , and not to meaning and representation? If so, then
photographic images need to be seen other than as conveyers of truth about
the social and political world. Alethia is bound up in the appearance of
something as a techno-ontological achievement: it is this achievement that
needs to be sorted out, and not the adequation of the appearance to its
'originary' event.
Michael Chanan also wrote:
As for truth - one of the questions which I thinks needs to be addressed
concerns the nature of the profilmic event. What is it about the
documentary scene, which, while enveloped in filmographic qualities,
nevertheless remains distinct from fiction? Is it just a matter of
trust?
I agree that 'trust' is an important element in this relation. But trust
itself is, in Heideggerain terms, a mode of Dasien's 'being-toward'. Trust
will have different aspects depending on its involvement with the equipment
in which it is found. Photographic and filmic equipmentality involve
certain kinds of trust, which are different from, say, figurative painting.
Warwick
Warwick Mules
Humanities
Central Queensland University
Rockhampton Queensland
Australia
|