On 10/27/10 11:44 PM, Frank, Michael wrote:
> 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 t=
> o the painting
>
Aside from the evidentiary uses of photography, there is a sense in
which the folk transparency that has been recognized since even before
photography plays a real role in how we take photos. We keep photos of
loved ones in wallets not because we need reminders of what they look
like but because they provide a sense of contact and I think often would
prefer a blurry memento of a a dead friend than a painting that really
captures their appearance. (On the other hand, images in general have
some of this uncanniness so this gets a bit muddy; Dominic Lopes in
Understanding Pictures argued that handmade pictures are also
transparent, which captures something though I suspect something that
should be kept separate from photos.)
In Camera Obscura, Barthes looks a 19th century photo and exclaims
"these are eyes that looked on Napoleon!" (Well, the passage is at least
something like that. . .) Don't think one would have the same reaction
to a painting of the same person.
j
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