Sorry Mike, but I feel bound to take this up, as I feel it gets to very core of the problem that visual studies (film, media, photography studies) has with notions of transparency.

There simply isn’t, and has never been, a photographic image which is “unretouched and unprocessed”. This is firstly by virtue of the fact that  the photographic image itself is a translation or encoding of the material, even at its most basic chemical or digital level, and that code has to have a system in order to be made intelligible. This encoding relies upon preset parameters which are defined by the culture which discovered or invented photography, and which has put it to use  – firstly to be able to judge the success of the process, and then its intellectual value.

Photography was a new medium like any other; it was defined by, rather than adopted, the desires of its host culture. I say defined because I disagree with Bolter/Grusin on this. Hence early photography was judged by rules of composition, framing, selection, detail and practical use developed around the cameo portrait, Rembrandt and Corot (or possibly Lorraine). We still have some of those today with the rectangular frame in film and photography (the real image is, of course, circular, as were the first Kodak images), amongst other cultural parameters drawn from the wider visual, non-photographic arts. So even a “rotten disposable camera” is culturally shaped, even if that cultural inscription seems outwardly to be feint or remote.  Of course, this inscription continues with “smile-finder” software and onscreen guides to taking good (i.e. Cultural acceptable) pictures. What we might ordinarily see as a marker of plain or unprocessed may actually be the product of a complex transhistorical process of inscription onto the material of the camera and other apparatus. Not least because the marker is just that – a signifier.

Historically, since the 1800s there is almost no precedent for a photographic process being anything other than a tool for the picturesque (I say almost because some examples exist of Talbot and others using photography for inventory, though this was likely considered after the practicality of the process was assured – it was nevertheless desired as an automatic method of inscribing the selectivity of the artist’s eye). Even more recent processes which are used only for measurement in the natural sciences, and are not expected to have an image appreciable by the public at large, still require a system within which they become intelligible and usable.

So what we are really dealing with, I think, is how the practical use of terms such as “transparency”, “actual”, “record” (or, dare I say it, the real), is affected by this. For example we might argue that common sense suggests that the cultural determinants of photography and the picturesque are so feint that no one would realistically connect the disposable camera with the “picturesque” anyway. Most people would accept a simple snapshot to be “real”, even if this is really based on a principle of “naivety”, rather than objectivity. So we can create a comfortable area within which we can discuss, say, the rhetoric of documentary filmmaking, or the appearance of the real in digital cinema.

However, when we are discussing the ontological or phenomenological I don’t think we are in such a safe place at all. No matter how groundbreaking or influential Walton’s article is (and I think it is great), it relies upon the safe place of discourse to try to explain the unsafe universal in photography. This is an interesting point in relation to John’s: I think the incisive quality of Chuck Close’s work is not that it demonstrates that transparency exists no matter how much physical labour is involved in the transcription (Close methodically transcribes the photograph onto the canvas), but that there is no such thing as transparency – Close’s overt physical labour points to the whole process of photography is physical encoding, no matter how light or easy the labour appears to be. The same can be said for some paintings by Richter.

For those following this thread, you can see more about Close at the Houston site: http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/life/index.html. Walton was writing about his photo-realistic transcriptions of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly his self-portrait (1967-68).

Oh balls, this is really long now, you wanted a rant, didn’t you?

Best
Damian

On 28/10/2010 04:44, "Frank, Michael" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

if i might intrude here – i suspect the issue at stake is the degree to which an object [any object] is a record of some actual historical event or person . . . it’s the quality of the object as evidence that matters most . . . for this reason photographs – at least entirely unretouched and unprocessed photographs – are ontologically transparent, in that you can see through them to some other thing that of which they are a record  . . . and this is true, no matter the visual quality of the photograph

put it differently:  a brilliant oil portrait of X might show you exactly what X looked like, but you could only know that if you already knew what X looked like; otherwise you’d have no way of knowing whether the portrait was accurate . . . OTOH even a rotten disposal camera shot of X would provide real evidence of what X looked like; it would be visually poor but what it did reveal would have an ontological transparency completely unavailable to the painting

m


From: Film-Philosophy [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dan Barnett
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 11:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: FILM-PHILOSOPHY Digest - 27 Oct 2010 to 28 Oct 2010 - Special issue (#2010-295)

John writes:
Transparency here really doesn't have anything to do with perceiving the
screen/frame as phenomenal window or to any kind of looking-like
relationship between image and object (except maybe to the extent some
notion of looking-like might be involved in being a picture at all).




Sorry John, I just don't get it. What exactly do you (Walton) mean when you claim that the transparency is ontological?

The causal relationship with the sensor isn't really that different than
the relationship with film (though maybe the use of Bayer arrays makes
digi images that use them a bit harder to describe). I'd think that
post=processing of selections, whether through analog dodging and
burning or digital curve adjustments the like, compromises transparency,
though I don't think global adjustments do (for the same reason that
exposure, framing, etc. do not). Actually I think Walton has claimed
that mechanical systematic painting procedures, somewhat like that used
by Chuck Close, would maintain transparency.




Here I just simply disagree. Any pixel can be replaced and everybody knows it. It's not a matter of complexity of description, it's a matter of the fundamental nature of the image.
Cultural conventions change. And the conventions around the digital image have made the transparency suspect.
db



* * Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html For technical help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon * Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com Contact: [log in to unmask] **
* * Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html For technical help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon * Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com Contact: [log in to unmask] **

--
Dr Damian Sutton
Reader in Photography

Department of Art and Design
School of Arts and Education
Middlesex University
Cat Hill Campus
Chase Side
Barnet, Herts.
EN4 8HT

Tel. (0)208 411 6827
Homepage: http://damiansutton.wordpress.com

*
*
Film-Philosophy
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html
For technical help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon
*
Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com
Contact: [log in to unmask]
**