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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 thescreen/frame as phenomenal window or to any kind of looking-likerelationship between image and object (except maybe to the extent somenotion 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
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