Class 6: Photography/Reproduction/Digital Media

Key Ideas (4)

1. How do meanings change when distinguishing between the photographic image and the photograph as an object?

• The image:

  (1) Interpretations based on narrative scene, symbollic meanings & form

  (2) The image as a stable visual signifier; its meaning transcending its physical form

• The photograph as an object:

  (1) Its physical & material qualities: how was the image experienced, interacted with, and circulated within a physical economy?

  (2) How does the above change as photograph’s physical form changes? (e.g. digitization)

  (3) How do we form relationships with images as their physical forms change? (e.g. commodity fetishism)

2. The poor image

   • Can be distributed more widely BUT can also be co-opted/manipulated

3. Reproduction

   • The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935) by Walter Benjamin

     • The work of art loses its aura through technological reproduction

     • Both mourns the aura & welcomes its destruction ⭐

4. Aestheticisation of politics vs. Politicisation of aesthetics

   • Discussed in Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art

   • Aestheticisation of politics: the destruction of humanity itself becomes an aesthetic experience

     • Leads to fascism & war

   • Politicisation of aesthetics: aesthetics used for political goals

Digital reproduction (2)

1. Virtual/digital worlds constitute part of our lived realities

   • Images & pixels are not just representations of reality, but ARE reality

   • E.g. We engage w/ them through tactile devices (e.g. ipads, laptops)

2. Reality of negative ecological impacts

   • Against the Anthropocene by T.J. Demos

   • Emphasises the ecological burden & materiality of something that seems so immaterial

     • Visualisations of the anthropocene are often made up of vast amounts of data

     • Collected by satellite centers, transformed into digitised files

     • Assumptions: data as invisible & hyper readable

   • In art: environmental toxicity is transformed into visual splendour

     • Our perverse enjoyment of the forces leading to our self-destruction

     • E.g. Louis Helbig, Effluent Steam (2012)

Walter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (4)

1. Tradition vs. Reproduction

   • Tradition: the unique existence of artworks

   • Reproduction detaches the reproduced object from tradition

     • Leaves us w/ a cultic awe of an earlier, pre-technological age (fetishisation of the unique art object)

2. Cult value (based on tradition & ritual) vs. Exhibition value (based on accessibility & mass consumption)

3. Aura

   • An artwork's presence in time & space, arises from the work's material uniqueness

   • The work of art loses its aura through technological reproduction

     • CANNOT be communicated through mechanical reproduction techniques

   • Today: tendency to use this idea to establish material hierarchies (e.g. photography vs. painting, high art vs. mass culture)

     • BUT we shouldn't extrapolate fixed meanings in Benjamin’s texts

     • He DIDN’T equate ‘aura’ to a particular medium (e.g. painting) ⭐

4. Mechanical reproduction as ambivalent & double-edged

   • Both mourns the aura & welcomes its destruction

   • New technologies: emancipatory & demystifying = more democratic access to art

Semantics

● Ferdinand de Saussure (Swiss linguist, father of semantics)

● Sign = anything that conveys meaning

● Signifier = things that give meaning (e.g. word/image)

● Signified = mental concept evoked in the mind

John Berger, 'Ways of Seeing' (4)

1. Existing traditions of European painting

   • Singular perspective: privileging of the eye of the beholder

   • BUT:

     (1) The eye must be physically present alongside the object to perceive it

     (2) The human eye can only be in 1 place at a time

2. Invention of the camera in the 2nd half of the 20th century

   • The image travels to the viewer, rather than the other way around

   • Consequences:

     (1) Has multiplied the possible meanings of a painting & destroyed its unique original meaning

     • Removed from their original locational contexts ⭐, which constituted part of its meaning

     • We can now see them in the context of our own lives (e.g. on a wall in our room)

     (2) Images can be used by different parties to different ends

     • The meaning of a painting is no longer attached to its physical form, but has become transmittable

     • E.g. film vs. painting

       • Unfolding time vs. all elements present simultaneously

       • Zooming in & framing can alter our interpretation of the painting vs. you can move closer to observe details WITHOUT losing the context of the rest of the image, which is constantly present in your viewing experience

3. The market value of an artwork now depends on it being genuine

   • False religiosity evoked in the name of culture & civilisation (but usually linked w/ cash value)

4. NOT necessarily a negative development, as long as we remain aware of what is happening

Geoffrey Batchen, 'Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination' (4)

1. Reproducibility is central to photography’s mode of being in the world

   • Capacity to:

     • Adopt different media, sizes, formats

     • Have many authors

     • Appear simultaneously in many places at once

   • The multiplicity of physical manifestations of photographs matches a similar proliferation of meanings & effects

2. Today: fluidity of photographic identity ⭐

   • Photographs are not only reproduced but transmuted from 1 state of being to another

   • Ability to separate a photograph from its image

3. Commodity fetishism

   • The commodity, rather than being a use value for people, assumes a power over people

     • Becomes a kind of God to be worshipped, sought after, & possessed

   • Paul Wood: The commodity becomes personified, so relations between people become objectified & thinglike

   • The image is brought closer to us but also distanced from us

     • Amplifies cult value = commodifies our r/s w/ the image)

     • The celebrity status of the artwork denies us access to the painting on our own terms

4. We should aim to write a history of the relationship of a photograph to its reproductions ⭐

   • Traces NOT just the production of individual photographs, but ALSO their migration as objects & dissemination as images

   • “Tracking of dispersals & transformations > a celebration of origins”

Hito Steyerl, 'In Defense of the Poor Image' (3)

1. Poor images

   • Made by changing tones, clipping/cropping, changing pixel count, etc.

2. Resolution as a digital value system

   • Fetishising of resolution/image quality (original = higher value)

   • Reflects ideas of capitalism

3. Consequnces of poor images

   (1) Allow issues of copyright to be surmounted = images can be distributed more widely

   • Democratises ownership = radical tool

   (2) Poor images can be co-opted & manipulated

   • Because the poor image is decontextualized & circulated

   (3) Has changed the ways we interact w/ digital images today

   • Creates networks that are either:

     (A) Conscious networks of active engagement w/ an image

     (B) Unconscious networks of mere awareness of an image

   • Impression > immersion

     • We’re okay with seeing something at low resolution, because we care more about short/brief interactions

Roland Barthes, 'Camera Lucida' (1)

1. Proposes systematic frameworks for how we think about photography

   • Operator (the 'to do') = the photographer

   • Spectator (the 'to look at') = the one who views the photograph

   • Spectrum (the 'undergo') = the subject of the photograph

   • Studium vs. Punctum

     • Studium: general investment in the image, extensive, moral/political/cultural interest that can be named

     • Punctum: Points at us, bruises us, grips us, attracts us to the image, intensive, detail/supplement that cannot be named, intuitive & subjective

Church of St Gervais, Paris (1897-1903), Eugène Atget

Historical context

• Atget

  • French photographer

  • Took photos of old, desolate, disappearing parts of Paris

    • Things being demolished & rebuilt

    • Gentrification

Interpretation

• Politicisation of aesthetics

  • Through his choice of subject matter

  • Photography as a political gesture

Workmen in the Ruhr Region (ca. 1928), August Sander

Effluent Steam (2012), Louis Helbig

Historical context

• Mentioned in Against the Anthropocene by T.J. Demos

• Art that highlights the ecological burden & materiality of something that seems so immaterial (these processes happen in faraway locations)

  • “Environmental toxicity transformed into visual splendour”

  • Our perverse enjoyment of the forces leading to our self-destruction

Description

• Steam rising from warm effluent (liquid waste) pouring into the frozen, snow-covered tailings pond

Interpretation

• Helbig’s images are controversial

  • Disturbing and contradictory

  • Beauty of a subject that is so environmentally destructive

  • He holds the mirror up, forcing us to confront the seductive appeal of our fossil fuel addiction

A throw of the dice will never abolish chance (1914 republication), Stephane Mallarmé

A throw of the dice will never abolish chance (1969), Marcel Broodthaers

(2)

The Treachery of Images (1929), René Magritte

1. NOT just a reproduction of an image, but a gold-framed painting hung in a museum accompanied by a label

2. Distinction between sign, signified & signifier

   • Formulated by Ferdinand de Saussure, Swiss linguist & father of semiotics

   • Sign conveys meaning (= pipe)

   • Signifier gives meaning; a word/image (= image of a pipe)

   • Signified is what is evoked in the mind by the sign; a mental concept (= the idea of a pipe)

     • Does NOT represent a specific pipe but a family of pipes, synchronically

The Interpretation of Dreams (1935), René Magritte

(1)

Fountain (1917), Marcel Duchamp

1. Reflects the invisible structures of museums, taste, what art is/is not

   • Rarity, authenticity, originality & uniqueness as markers of value

     • Implicitly asserted by the space of the gallery/museum

     • The urinal’s display in a gallery makes it a work of art, not the urinal’s material/visual qualities itself ⭐