Capturing the moment or thinking you are?

<p><strong>"To reach the limit that not even mathematics can explain and trying to freeze time and capture a moment of eternity - that's what photography means to me and this is the reason I'm always trying to see things as unstable as they are."</strong> <br /> <br /> This is how I present myself in my website (www. anunesphotography.com), and I'll explain why and propose a debate around this thought.<br /> <br /> Any photographer knows that when you press your finger to take a "photo" you are actually commanding the shutter aperture which will be opened for a while and capture a reflection of your subject during that time. It may be just a small fraction of time (say 1/1000 sec) or even minutes, depending on the type of picture you are aiming at.<br>

Even though the time may vary what we will capture is NOT a single moment, it is actually a kind of a short movie or the sequence of infinite moments that our eyes and thoughts cannot reach! What we see when we look at a photograph is simply the occurence of several events in a row, never a single frame!<br>

What does that mean? Maybe with photographs we are facing an example of what some philosophers treated as the limits of our senses, or the limit of what is actually real.<br>

Is a photograph a copy of a real subject or is it a copy of a representation?<br>

Let's debate!</p>

<p>A. Nunes</p>

<p>Time does not exist, not outside the framework that the mind applies for it. So a photograph can't freeze time, but it can evoke a concept ( eternity ? ) of our concept of a human construct that we call time, and to which we come by through the measurement of change in events and motion, marking the differential between states of energy relative to each other. A camera can record any such state of energy or movement subsequent to the next and produce a photograph that is measureable of being representative of one particular event of energy in space, not time....Uhm, I think....</p>

<p>Agreed that a photograph is a "mini-movie", a continuous stretch of time and not a frozen instant.<br>

But to the question "Is a photograph a copy of a real subject or is it a copy of a representation?" I'd have to say: neither. It is an artefact which is <i>related to</i> the original subject in the mind of the photographer but <i>evokes other</i> signifieds in the mind of the viewer – different for <i>each</i> viewer – and that fact is not changed by the instant/duration question?</p>

<p>

<p>Wow, that's deep. I think I hurt my head. It reminds of not long ago when everyone was up in a tiffy because someone discovered that Pluto isn't a planet. There were all kinds of debates and people were freaking out. In the end, whether Pluto is a planet or not, it's still there, floating millions of miles away not caring in the least of our existence. </p>

<p>So whether a photograph is a copy of a real subject or a copy of a representation, or simply just a photograph, how does it change anything? </p>

<p>In the end, you look through the viewfinder, adjust your settings, snap an "image", and either sell it or show it to your friends. </p>

<p>There's a lot of peace in simplicity :)</p>

<p>~ Alain</p>

</p>

<p>I like what Felix has added to the notion that a photograph is some sort of copy (which can certainly be one way of making and seeing photographs). The word "evoke" is very helpful, and I think the subject can evoke as much in the photographer as in the eventual viewer. I'd like to add that a photograph can also be a creation, whereby the photographer uses the world -- the original subject -- as the raw materials from which to build a vision, sometimes of that very same world, allowing it to make itself apparent in a more timeless way, freed, perhaps, from its original context and re-energized by the four edges which the lens provides.</p>

<p>Alexandre, I appreciate very much how you've expressed the idea that photography can put us up against traditional philosophical limits. There's a sense in which I view certain types of photographs as transcendent, precisely because they do edge us away from the more unnoticed use of our senses and can make us see a little differently and in a more focused way than we saw before. That infinity you talk about may ironically be felt more because of the "limits" of the lens's framing.</p>

<p>Fred:<br>

> ...a photograph can also be a creation...<br>

Can I change the words "can also be" to "is"?<br>

Whether we intend it or not, the acto f photographing <i>does</i>, consciously or unconsciously, for the reasons and through the mechanisms you mention, create something new, "build a vision ... freed ... from its original context".</p>

<p>Alain<br>

I agree with your "there's a lot of peace in simplicity" statement, but I have to put another perspective to the rest of your thoughts. Although we can opt to forget about all philosophical aspects of our lives and simply enjoy it (including photography) I believe things and life can gain some more meaning and, at least, more excitement if we just not stop questioning and reflecting about it. Isn't philosophy all about it?</p>

<p>If a painter like Alex Coleville creates one of his "realistic" images, it takes him a long time. How much difference is there between an image created by a painter over a month, or a photograph taken over 1/1000 second? Why does the time involved in the creation of the piece mean anything at all when it comes to viewing the piece, and its significance or meaning? Is a painter's portrait any more or less related to reality than a photographer's?</p>

<p>Isn't it the image that is important, not the shutter speed? An image gets its significance more from its content than from the technology used to create it. A movie is really just an illusion created by a rapidly viewed collection of stills. Almost everything that happens to a viewer of an image happens because of what goes on inside the viewer when he looks at it, so how much does the specific act of the creation of the image matter to that internal process?</p>

<p>I also think it is important to understand that time does exist. Einstein would not be happy if we tried to say it was just our imagination.</p>

Lord Louis Mountbatten once told his nephew, Prince Philip, "When you are introduced to a lady wearing a low cut gown, do not glance down, even for a split second. If someone were to snap a photo in that split second, it would like like you were staring at her breasts."

 

In that example the photo is not a copy of a representation. Quite the opposite. I would say it is a misrepresentation. Is it a copy of a real subject? Again I would say no, unless Philip really were a lecherous young (now old) man.

 

So what is it? I would say it is good for a few thousand quid to the tabloids, but not much else philosophically.

<p>Felix, Thanks. I understand why you would change it to "is," though I'd probably leave it as "can be." On one level, yes, the act of photographing does create something new, a photograph . . . and a new context. But I think the creation aspect can be seen less physically and objectively than that. Some photos, though they do, technically speaking, "create" something new, are really meant to be copies of something or at least are not intended as creations, <em>per se</em>. I photograph the things in my house to document them for my insurance carrier. Though I am creating a photograph, that's not the kind of creation I'm really referring to when distinguishing the type of photograph that copies or represents from the type of photograph that creates. For me, the more significant sense of creation comes in with the desire, intent, and overall approach of the photographer, although creation does, as you suggest, sometimes take place very unintentionally. Some photographers want to capture a sunset and have no real designs on creation, and many of those photographs don't create in the sense I'm thinking of. Some want to create something more personal with their sunsets. Don, a contributor to these forums, has talked about his desire to allow the subject of his photographs to speak or present itself to the viewer and tends not to want to create in the way I meant it and his photos seem to bear that out. Some photographers clearly want to take an original subject or scene and use it simply as raw material to create something very much different from that original subject. Especially in these forums, which I am trying to approach a little differently in order to get more out of them, I am going to shy away from making statements like "photography <em>is</em> . . . ," though I certainly have no problem with your doing it and completely understand where you are coming from.</p>

<p>All, I'm loving the different angles that are appearing in this thread.<br>

Just as a matter of refreshing one of my initial thoughts, I'd like to emphasize the distinction (if possible) between real and its representation, as thoroughly and brilliantly explored by Schopenhauer and the likes.<br>

When I look at an object, say an apple, what exactly am I looking at? Is there such a thing like an apple or are a certain shape + smell + texture +... something that we represent to ourselves as an apple? I know this is a long an almost eternal debate - wheter our senses are limitations to our minds and thoughts - and that it is was addressed by some of the most famous philosophers specially from the mid-1800.<br>

What I would like to discuss here is how phoptographs can add (or subtract) from such debate. Is a photoghraph a proof that objects exists for real? If I can materialize a copy of it, does that mean it is real? Or the photograph is just another type of representation, captured and sensed by the same system we have in place by mother nature and which is limited by its own characteristics?</p>

<p>I think more contemporary Philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Rorty better address the question of what is real than photography can. Bringing in photographs will likely just emphasize the points of the debate, depending on where one stands, maybe make them a little more substantial, rather than really doing anything toward resolving the debate. Wittgenstein and Rorty, on the other hand, move the debate along and change its terms, seeing it more as a matter of language and historically accepted false dichotomies. To make it a clearer discussion and to keep it photographically relevant, how do the differences you speak of, whether something is represented to us as its qualities or whether that something is "real," as you call it, come out in your photographs or affect your photography or your approach to it? Are you exploring such matters or do you think photographs can? Are there examples of specific photographs by you or someone famous that you think point to one side of the debate vs. the other, that make you think of qualities more than substance? It would be interesting to ground the discussion some.</p>

<p>Fred<br>

You've raised a good point in all this discussion which is how the representation or reality of things may or may not affect our photographs. To be very honest I am still not exploring such (alleged) dichotomy into my work and neither I'm aware of someone that has done it on purpose (but I'm not what you'd call an expert in the history of photography). But I do think we can incorporate these thoughts into our routines as photographers, and each time we point out to a subject think if we are planning to capture the object in itself or some kind of its representation. Thinking a little bit more about this, I think we all do something in this direction when shooting: sometimes we are aiming at showing "something" behind the scene (its meaning, its correlation to the world, its context to a situation, etc), and in other opportunities we are just looking for the pure beauty of a picture (like in a landscape photo).</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Fred, You've raised a good point in all this discussion which is how the representation or reality of things may or may not affect our photographs. <strong>To be very honest I am still not exploring such (alleged) dichotomy into my work and neither I'm aware of someone that has done it on purpose</strong></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I suppose that every philosopher who's actively interested in photography or every photographer who's interested in philosophy intuitively approaches photography in such a way, with photographs that are as well about the ' surface of reality ' as that what can be sensed ( but not nessecarily seen and recorded by the camera ) to be behind this surface. I've said it before, but I've always found<a href="http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424024250/969/duane-michals-madame-schroedingers-cat.html"> </a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_GyWDmsRqo3E/SN22lUsdJYI/AAAAAAAAAao/hoaN8yYEmIU/s1600-h/duanemichalsproof.jpg">this photographers</a> approach to the medium very distinctive and purposeful (with great wit by the incorporated text and without being all too heavy and serious ) in it's interconnection with philosophical questions about <a href="http://www.artnet.com/artwork/423940620/969/duane-michals-madame-schroedingers-cat.html"> the nature of reality</a>. The slightly bored <a href="http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424024250/969/duane-michals-madame-schroedingers-cat.html">authority behind that cats look</a> is definitely unquestionably though.</p>

<p>Time is simply a way of sequencing and measuring motion. Movement is a fundamental property of energy and the matter it becomes. Time is not a separate entity that can be isolated and studied as an object by itself without losing the significance of what it demonstrates, ie., that something was here and now it is there. One can study rulers and systems of measurements in the abstract, but to find out what these systems actually do, he must go out and measure a thing.</p>

<p>It would seem to be a matter of simple observation that something in the field of view in front of a camera has moved, even ever so slightly, during the exposure. I believe that most people would not think to be aware of such a thing if the image is clear enough that slight movement is very difficult to see. This must be something in the appeal and value of Philosophy that it causes us to pause and reflect on details an meanings we would otherwise ignore.</p>

<p>I agree with Felix that a photograph is a fresh object in its own right that is never the subject itself. The eyewitness account is not the crime itself. I think this is what he meant when he described the photograph as a creation. The photographer did not create the thing exactly, but the photographic apparatus did. At the time the photographer depreses the shutter button the camera serves as a kind of copying machine, and the image it saves is made from the light that it received from the subject. During the exposure itself the camera is acting independently of all of the artistic decisions that the photographer makes before and after. This moment of all moments in photography is not art.</p>

<p>I don't know what photographs tell us about the nature of reality and perception. I think that this great debate will have to roll on to attract the interest of greater minds than mine. In the meantime I am reminded of the Peanuts episode showing the kids lying on the ground looking up at the clouds. Schroeder saw great muscians in them, and Charlie Brown saw ordinary things like dogs and cats. I'm more like Charlie Brown.</p>

<p><strong>Phylo--</strong></p>

<p>Thanks for those links. Right on target.</p>

<p>They are in the vain of Magritte's self-referencing-paradox-of-a-question-in-the-form-of-a-painting-with-words:<br /> http://www.nku.edu/%7Eocallaghant/courses/350/magritte.jpg</p>

<p><strong>Alexandre--</strong></p>

<p>I think German/Expressionism/Surrealism of the early-mid 20th-Century also explored questions of reality. An example by Herbert Bayer:<br /> http://images.artnet.com/WebServices/picture.aspx?date=19991004&catalog=10948&gallery=110889&lot=00022&filetype=2</p>

<p>Then there's this very interesting quote about photography's influence on Impressionist painting:<br /> <em>The rise of the impressionist movement can be seen in part as a reaction by artists to the newly established medium of photography. The taking of fixed or still images challenged painters by providing a new medium with which to capture reality. Initially photography's presence seemed to undermine the artist's depiction of nature and their ability to mirror reality. Both portrait and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth as photography "produced lifelike images much more efficiently and reliably". </em><br /> <em>In spite of this, photography actually inspired artists to pursue other means of artistic expression, and rather than competing with photography to emulate reality, artists focused "on the one thing they could inevitably do better than the photograph – by further developing into an art form its very subjectivity in the conception of the image, the very subjectivity that photography eliminated". The Impressionists sought to express their perceptions of nature, rather than create exacting reflections or mirror images of the world. This allowed artists to subjectively depict what they saw with their "tacit imperatives of taste and conscience". Photography encouraged painters to exploit aspects of the painting medium, like colour, which photography then lacked; "the Impressionists were the first to consciously offer a subjective alternative to the photograph".</em></p>

<p>It's a quote that likely rang true at the time and, in historical context, says something significant. It's underlying assumption about photography, however, is questionable to say the least. If you're thinking about these questions, it would be interesting to consider why this quote is so wrong regarding many photographs and approaches to photography and whether you may want to prove it wrong in the work you do. In challenging the quote, I ask if photographers can "develop . . . subjectivity in the conception of the image?" For me, the answer is "Yes."</p>

<p>It seems odd to identify an extended quotation as "interesting," "significant," questionable," "wrong," or "right" when few are in fact interested in it. </p>

<p>In fact, nobody here confuses a photograph with "reality." </p>

<p>If it's a picture of a duck, there's nothing wrong with saying "that's a duck." If you, the photographer, prefer to consider it something else, say so or don't...makes little difference.</p>

<p>If one's photos, lacking commentary, don't inspire conversation (a measure of significance?), of what value do they have if commentary is added? A blog is a blog is a blog. By definition, hardly anybody reads them...</p>

<p>Photography is a grammatical entity, like a gerund, more than a phenomenon. Referring to photography as some other "it" usually suggests a constricted agenda. Assertions beyond the grammer are assertions about subsets: duck photography vs sunset photography vs industrial photography vs. abstract expressionism, glamor (glamour), or decor, for example...and even then, much of the conversation revolves around technology, duck identification, or frames...rather than images.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>In fact, nobody here confuses a photograph with "reality."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Obviously, and yet it becomes a part of that " reality" the moment it is made. Photography, a photograph, gives substance to the concept of reality like a clock gives substance to the concept of time. Repeating myself here from an older thread in this forum that dealt very much with the same question of photography's relationship towards reality.</p>

<p>Wow deep thoughts here,<br>

I have to say that I consider Pluto a planet--even if it's just a little ball of nothing spinning in out orbit. Juswt when I thought it was safe to just snap a picture someone comes along and poses this question...I have to say that it seems as if we're over-thinking this whole process...I see an object I like--point my camera and push that little red button and whala! I like to think that it's magic and leave off on that--When you close the door to the fridge do you wonder if the light just turns off or does a little man in a snow suit come out from within and push the off switch?</p>

<p>In a way you're right. ' Over thinking, over analyzing seperates the body from the mind ' ( Lateralus, Tool ) and we need both mind AND body to turn our thoughts into action, to go out there and actually photograph, or make it happen, whatever that might be.</p>

<p>People are different in that some are more externally focused / aware while others are more internally focused / aware, but dismissing either one of those views, especially as a photographer, is leaving out a whole lot of potential.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>This is not a response to any of the interesting posts already contributed to this thread. Rather I want to point out, in response to a bit of the original post by A Nunes:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Even though the time may vary what we will capture is NOT a single moment, it is actually a kind of a short movie or the sequence of infinite moments that our eyes and thoughts cannot reach!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's not so; photography is <em>not</em> like a movie. It's sort of an un-movie ("move"-ie) . If you leave the shutter open long enough, anything that "moves" will vanish like smoke. Only the still items will remain. Very long exposures of street scenes will show only what remained stationary -- all animated things will have evaporated.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>If you leave the shutter open long enough, anything that "moves" will vanish like smoke.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Exactly. Good point. Shows that a single still photograph can capture and hold on to almost anything but movement, and since time is simply movement / change, or the measuring of change in events or objects relative to each other, "time" isn't actually recorded nor frozen in photography.</p>

<p>But, Julie ... objects which move less than those which "vanish like smoke" remain on the record.<br>

While I wouldn't myself describe it as a "movie", A Nunes' point remains: that a photograph is always a record of a period of time with finite duration, including any moderate movement by objects within the frame which do not exceed the recording capacity of the medium; which is philosophically different from an "instant".<br>

The same is true of paintings, of course ... as with Constable, for example, whose shadows in different parts of a painting sometimes fall in different directions according to the time of day when he did that bit (Benjamin West: "light and shadow never stand still")<br>

When I was at school, and the panoramic photographer arrived, there was always at least one child who ran from one end to the other of the group to appear twice ... not a "movie", but definitely an capturing of movement within a frame.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>When I was at school, and the panoramic photographer arrived, there was always at least one child who ran from one end to the other of the group to appear twice ... not a "movie", but definitely an capturing of movement within a frame</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Yes. But it's not so much movement / change in a continuous linear fashion, which is what we experience or concieve as time. It is a capturing of movement within a frame, that's correct. But it's much less so a capturing of movement within time, which is the movement. You can't move through movement. You can't travel through travel, through "time". </p>

<p>Phylo, I think this thread is confusing still photographs with photography. </p>

<p>Still photographs are usually records of instants (eg 1/60th)...to deny that would reject the most common word usage ( opposite Shakespeare and Webster). </p>

<p><strong>A Nunes, with his OT, has bought into a common error, conflating "capture" with "record."</strong></p>

<p>"Photography," unlike "still photograph," is a label that usually refers to nothing in particular...at best it implies a method of visual recording. Among "still photographers" it has typically referred to their activity, but it has increasingly (and properly IMO) referred to the activity of cinematographers who use film and video cameras.</p>

<p><strong>One can of course move through movement.</strong> That's what dancers do... at multiple simultaneous levels (which makes dance reminiscent of "photography"). </p>

<p> And we sometimes travel through time in the most fundamental experiential sense...people sustaining severe head injuries regularly report 20 minute dislocations, and participants in warfare regularly report hyper-real flashbacks. <strong>Experience is as close to "reality" as we will ever get.</strong></p>