The intrinsic and extrinsic matters of photographs

<p>They are somewhat inseparable but we can talk about them as such.</p>

<p>To what extent is the significance of a photograph not affected by matters extrinsic to the photograph?</p>

<p>When I know things about the photographer, about his goals, about his milieu, his technique, the way he treats his wife, that may likely influence my experience of his photographs.</p>

<p>Is there something intrinsic to the photograph itself, however, that knowledge, external associations, or information will not be able to change for me?</p>

<p>I'm a strong believer in the importance of context, cultural influence, etc. At the same time, I feel such a deeply personal relationship to some photographs, paintings, pieces of music, films, that their significance seems to reside internally, within them or within my relationship to them, no matter the external circumstances.</p>

<p>We recently debated whether knowledge or understanding plays a role in art. I am assuming for the purposes of this question that it does. At what point, though, do we transcend it? Do we go beyond that knowledge and more immediately experience the light and shadow, the textures, the story inside the photo, the composition, technique, visual imagery, symbolic form?</p>

<p>Two personal examples:</p>

<p>1) Annie Liebovitz's photo of Johnny Depp and Kate Moss</p>

<p>http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6nsvxb38ykU/SRJfBrCR73I/AAAAAAAADjg/MmEgZiGDbKA/s1600-h/leibovitz12.jpg</p>

<p>I might (but don't) take issue with Leibovitz's commercial success and might (but don't) take issue with the fact that many of her subjects are Hollywood stars. Those facts can either distract me or repel me from her work or they can actually explain it, allowing me to appreciate it all the more. Mozart might have been the ultimate cop-out of an artist, writing and playing for the court to whom he owed his sustenance and ability to keep working. But he did it so damn well, didn't he? Regardless of what I know about Leibovitz and about Depp and Moss, there seems to be something in the image itself that captivates me and transcends who she is and who they are.</p>

<p>2) Leni Riefenstahl's <em>Olympiad</em></p>

<p>

<p>Riefenstahl was, indeed, a wonderful, horrible woman. Propagandist and obsessive liar, she was a craftswoman and artist. Tempted though I might be to spit at her if I saw her walking in the street, I can watch <em>Olympiad</em> and <em>Triumph</em> and be moved every time because of something that seems right there in the film, unmistakable and unerodable by what I know to be the case about her life. There is even something horrible in the association between her Nazi films and how she idolizes the bodies in <em>Olympiad</em>, but that horror just goes into the mix of my personal experience of the films.</p>

<p>I'm not interested in an assessment or critique of my tastes. I'm interested in hearing your experiences with photos or examples from other media of things that seem to incorporate but also transcend their extrinsic qualities. Do you have intrinsically moving experiences that you can articulate?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>For myself, at least, I would say that the context of the photograph and photographer have little or no influence on my reading of the photograph; to that extent, the extrinsic is irrelevant. My own context, however, cannot be separated. There is, in a real sense, no intrinsic matter to the photograph; only my extrinsic response to its triggering signs.</p>

<p>As humans, we are designed to frustrate "intrinsically moving experiences"... we are designed to absorb information constantly and to view all experience through it. Zen pratitioners attempt by passivity to escape that reality (calling it a delusion, veil of Maya)...like everyone else, they may touch on intrinsics, but they realize the joke and move beyond it. So it seems.</p>

 

<p>The extrinsic factors often have an overpowering affect on my assessment of a photograph, even when I try to set them aside. I cannot, for example, develop an appreciation for any of Annie Liebovitz's work, knowing as much as I do about that artist"s colorful(?) background and how it influenced the creation of an image . The same for Diane Arbus, because of the tinge of exploitation that seems to lurk in the background. I think that if I had no knowledge of those two artists and saw any of their photographs with which I was not familiar (and without attribution to the artist) the intrinsics might cause me to respond more positively. I suppose in that respect I am - like many Americans - a victim of cultural acclimation, perhaps to the detriment of my fundamental artistic sensibility.<br>

There are, on the other hand, photographers whose work only seems to affect me at the intrinsic level. Kenna, Evans, and Salgado, for example. William Eggleston is another, although there are certainly significant extrinsic elements behind his work.</p>

<p> </p>

<p ><b>Felix--</b></p>

<p >Good point about your own context. The phrase "getting out of myself" comes to mind. I know it's not meant literally, but I think the idea behind it is pertinent. I sometimes feel like I lose myself in the photo I'm looking at or the music I'm listening to. It's a different way of attending to something and I think we can lose our context (to a greater degree than we're accustomed to).</p>

<p >"no intrinsic matter to the photograph"</p>

<p >Philosophically I agree. Intrinsic properties are problematic. That's why I kept saying "seems" and talked about my <i>relationship</i> to the photo, with external matters as secondary. I know these qualities are not intrinsic, but they feel as if they are. I allow myself that kind of liberty.</p>

<p ><b>John--</b></p>

<p >" . . . are designed to absorb information constantly and to view all experience through it" seems like it is true for you. Many of us don't have that kind of relationship to information. I can let go of it (to a degree that allows me to forget it and be in the moment . . . the zone, as it were). I respect the difference and your perspective, because of it, is often enlightening. But it's how <i>you</i> operate, and likely not representative. </p>

<p ><b>Rick--</b></p>

<p >I've experienced that powerful effect you talk about. I once thought Mel Gibson gave a superior performance in <em>The Year of Living Dangerously</em>. I've grown to hate him as a man over the years and really couldn't bear to watch his performance again. Maybe because I didn't live through Riefenstahl it's not as personal somehow, so I can tolerate her stuff. Also, maybe because I don't have to look at her when watching her films. There may be something visceral there. I think, as you've said, there is a tension between information/knowledge and artistic sensibility. They need each other and they struggle.</p>

 

<p>For me, extrinsic matters only become a factor when the subject of the photograph (or movie) and the sins of the photographer are directly related. For example, if any of the well-known photographers of nude children turned out to be paedophiles, that would fully color my interpretation of their images.<br>

Likewise, I have not watched any Woody Allen movies since his domestic problems with Mia Farrow -- because his movies are usually about domestic problems. (In fairness, I was never a big fan even before that.)</p>

<p>Julie--</p>

<p>That's an interesting approach which makes sense to me. I guess it's different than mine, given how I feel about Riefenstahl's craft and artistry even on films where her proclivities and the subjects of the films are closely tied.</p>

<p>It strikes me that a lot of photographers/artists use their modes of expression to explore their darker sides. I think good work may often be related to that darker and edgier side (I refuse to call it "sin"). What sometimes does not see the light of day in polite company will be expressed in novels, paintings, and photographs. I'm often drawn to and fascinated by that kind of work. It may be why I have a tendency to recognize the importance of the moral aspects of photographing but also often approach it amorally (to the extent I can and within what I consider to be reason).</p>

<p>Fred, you seem to define "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" in conscious, perhaps even moralizing terms...you seem to think *conscious awareness* of Riefenstahl's Nazi history may be relevant (one way or another) to appreciation of her photography by others, but that you can personally rise above it.</p>

<p>I doubt you would have posted this if you weren't heavily concerned with the Nazi dimension...you're addressing something that for you may be only secondarily perceptual.</p>

<p>Riefenstahl's brilliant work with Nuba (African) wrestlers seems (to me) substantially about masculinity.. it's more powerful than her Nazi work (IMO), and I'm sure you've viewed it, so I think you'd have used that as your example, rather than the historic Nazi work, if you really meant to address "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" in perception (I think those are distinctions between non-phenomena).</p>

<p>"Intrinsic" seems a theoretic impossibility (save arguably for Zen practitioners) because virtually all of our perception is colored (flavored, heated, interpreted, amplified, muddied, repressed) by the accumulated hologram in each skull, only a tiny amount of which is conscious.</p>

<p>We commonly imagine that "moral" decisions are wrestled with consciously, but it may be that the embedded histories of our respective races (eg Talmudic, Roman, local mullah's Islam, hillbilly-Limbaugh-O'Reilly) more commonly outweigh conscious struggle and carry us along our near-innate stream of goodness/badness without any effort on our part.</p>

<p>Some say Freud's key ideas were fundamentally Talmudic, despite his own secular intentions. It's said that he brought a Japanese person, a proto-Nazi (Jung) and an American wasp into his school in order to establish that his ideas weren't inherently Jewish. He dressed British and thought Yiddish http://www.freud.org.uk/INpics.htm :-)</p>

<p>John--</p>

<p>I am really curious to hear people's approaches to this. Please don't derail the thread. Thanks.</p>

<p>--Fred</p>

<p>Fred,<br>

I think I agree with you about enjoying explorations of darker and edgier sides of one's (or humanity's) nature.<br>

Thinking further about my previous post, the turn-off is when the pictures become a lie because of what I know.<br>

If a paedophile made pictures that were openly and explicitly about the nature of paedophilia I would quite possibly be interested (I'm not sure that's a good thing, but that's precisely why you're interested in this issue, yes?). Or if Woody Allen made a movie about what a complete, unfunny jerk he is (some of the time), I'd probably enjoy it.<br>

-Julie</p>

<p>It's fascinating to watch what happens when a painting in a gallery attributed to a famous 17th or 18th century artist is proved to be the work of his student. Why does the value suddently drop from millions of dollars to thousands, and find itself taken off the gallery wall? Doesn't it have value as a work of art regardless of who made it? Perhaps we have a tendancy to both over-value and under-value works based on what we know of the author.<br>

Years ago (when I was still a kid) I travelled interstate to see an exhibition of "150 Years of Photography". I knew nothing of any but a couple of the photographers, and as I wandered around I kept thinking to myself, "This is crap - I could do better than that!" I bought a book of the exhibition (hey, I needed a souvenir of the trip), and came to appreciate some of the works I'd earlier derided as I learned more about the photographers.<br>

A few years later, I went back to the same gallery for an exhibition of Monet and Renoir. I'd only seen reproductions in books before, and liked Monet more than Renoir based on that. But when I met the paintings in person I reversed that opinion - some of the Renoir works were so rich that they just couldn't be reproduced in a 4-colour process. Even now, when I see reproductions of those paintings, I try to substitute the real colours and textures - that is, what I'm "seeing" in my mind is a blend of what's before my eyes and my memory of the original.<br>

What do you do when you walk into an exhibition without knowing anything about the artist/photographer? Do you look at the picture first, and try to interpret it, or be moved by it, or have some kind of response to it? Or do you read the title and the blurb first, and then step back and look at it with that knowledge? Do you have a preference or habit? Do you think one way is "better" than the other (at least for you)?</p>

<p> It's an interesting question but I find it hard to answer, I can't easily think of any such intrinsic / extrinsic specific experiences in the context of wich I understand the question to be, well, I clearly <em>can</em> think of them, those intrinsic and extrinsic matters, but only in a way of them to be almost non-existent ( or unexplainable ) in relation to my direct experience of various forms of art, which I believe you recognize your examples also to be in, by the definition that they seem to move you. </p>

<p>If you're speaking of works of art and recognizing such works of art as being intrinsically moving on a strong emotional level, then I think that that recognition becomes <em>unconditional in it's motivation</em> from the moment one experiences it, whether that motivation could have been altered positivily or negatively on an extrinsic level doesn't matter, not because it doesn't matter ' just because ' but because it doesn't even come into play and therefore I feel it can not begin to matter, or give much weight to the actual experiencing of the art.</p>

<p> It feels rather strange, impossible maybe, to recognize a work of art, and then step backwards, contemplating it's intrinsic and extrinsic quality's, or contemplating about them beforehand, revaluing the recognition. I think the recognition ignites in an instant and can't be contemplated upon, it's unconditional and can't be or doesn't need to be ' negotiated ' with afterwards.And I don't think there's any real struggle between the intrinsic and extrinsic as they pretty much cancel each other out the very moment the art is experienced and recognized as art. Almost like any preconcieved idea about ones selfimage might be canceled out and leveled flat immediately after approaching and looking into a mirror.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"Is there something intrinsic to the photograph itself, however, that knowledge, external associations, or information will not be able to change for me?"</p>

</blockquote>

<p> </p>

<p> What you seem to question as that being <em>intrinsic to the photograph</em> I believe to be that what's well, intrinsic to you / <em>in you</em>, me, or anyone who's viewing. Knowledge and the external associations I believe also to be <em>external in you</em>. Me being the viewer, I find it hard to consider this ' triple bouncing around ' between intrinsic and extrinsic parts of the photograph / object and myself. </p>

 

<p>Fred, you've posted a pair of words that IMO have no meaning/utility in this context. The other responses seem to agree that there's no such thing as "intrinsic" and don't seem to come close to your issue otherwise...if you think someone else is on "rails" with you, please say who/how.</p>

<p>It's impossible to "derail" something that lacks rails in the first place.</p>

<p>I think you're struggling to reduce perception(universal part of human existence) to abstract, impersonal terms (optional game). Words can only sketch perceptions...therefore philosophy can only sketch perceptions, just as it can only sketch existence (which we perceive without words).</p>

<p>You're trying to deny limitation to one's own (our own) perceptions by inventing an alternative universe, an absolute, external, parallel reality (where "god" was born).</p>

<p>We can deny our tribal/pack animal reality by proposing a universal loneliness, per Sartre, or can conclude (as I do) that Sartre was a narcissist, glorifying his own pathology. One of the standard, third rails, is academic, objectification, pretending nobody's home.</p>

<p>Intrinsic/extrinsic notions might ring more bells if you were talking about painting, where it's long been said that some painters show us paint and others show us images.</p>

<p>We could stretch that point to say that some photographers show us gelatin silver and others show us pigment, but I don't recall any well-informed, well-experienced examples...just the old inkjet vs darkroom stuff.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>"Is there something intrinsic to the photograph itself, however, that knowledge, external associations, or information will not be able to change for me?"</p>

<p>"Do we go beyond that knowledge and more immediately experience the light and shadow, the textures, the story inside the photo, the composition, technique, visual imagery, symbolic form?"</p>

<p>Obviously, "light and shadow..." etc are intrinsic to the photograph and are not "extrinsic matters", but I do not think (here I am speaking only of myself, ymmv) they are what attracts, but are instead reasons or rationales that come later as we attempt to explain to ourselves why we are attracted. The origin of attraction has been a matter of personal 'archeology' and I've found a few markers in the lower strata. I think what attracts is formed very early in life, much of it before the individual acquires language and is therefore difficult to articulate.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Fred-<br>

I might suggest that the only true intrinsic value in photography lies in the photographing, not the presentation. Something to chew on.</p>

<p><!--StartFragment--><strong>Martin--</strong><br />I'll start with you since it impacted me the most. I was just talking to a friend about how the distinction between viewing and making photographs often is not clearly addressed in these discussions. While I don't agree with you -- because I think "intrinsic" can be used meaningfully if not "philosophically correctly" to describe some properties of photographs from the viewer's standpoint — the viewer/photographer distinction is an important one. Can you chew on it some aloud? I'd like to know where you're headed with it. Thanks for adding it to the mix. <!--EndFragment--></p>

<p><!--StartFragment--><b>Julie--</b><br />We're getting deeper step by step. Actually, for me, the "lie" is one of the more intriguing aspects of photography and art in general. While I believe photographs can tell important truths, truths that words can't always get to, I think it sometimes accomplishes that by lying (using the term loosely). An example from my own experience is that viewers often project from portraits of mine onto the personality of the subject of the portrait. Sometimes I go into a "portrait" with every intention of creating a persona, an artifice, rather than conveying what I consider to be the subject's personality. Many a photographic mask has revealed something significant. Is the image of the subject of the portrait a signifier or the representation of an individual? Sometimes both.<br /> <br /> If I knew a pedophile had tried to lie or hide something in a photograph he had taken, I'd be even more intrigued. <!--EndFragment--></p>

<p><!--StartFragment--><strong>Tim--</strong><br />I usually look and am happy if I'm moved. I may or may not interpret, depending on the piece, the context, and how much I've been moved. Sometimes, the more moved, the less I interpret, sometimes the opposite. I will often read the titles and the gallery information about the painter/photographer after an initial viewing. Sometimes I won't.<br /> <br />What you get at in the first part of your post is something that comes up in these forums. There's often a sense with art and with commercially successful art that the viewing public does what it's told. If we're taught that a particular painter is good, we generally accept it, and then if we find out a painting attributed to him is not his, we are lost. <br /> <br /> Color is a good example of what I'm calling an intrinsic property. We all know that color needs a perceiver to have meaning. In that sense it is trivially not intrinsic. But as related, say, to the biography of the painter, the way color strikes us is more immediate. There's even a science of color and its effects. Color is much less mediated by information and knowledge than is something like biography, or what awards a photographer may have one, or what year he made the photograph in, or whether he was a soldier or a journalist in the war he photographed.<br /> <!--EndFragment--></p>

<p><!--StartFragment--><b>Phylo--</b><br /> I don't revalue the original recognition or the immediate experience, but what I learn or what I come up with when I eventually step back and take in more material that's extrinsic to that original experience affects my future experience with the particular photograph, painting, or piece of music. <br /> <br /> The most immediate experience I've ever had with music was my first Grateful Dead concert back in the 70s. You've described adequately with the one word "unconditional" what that was like.<br /> <br /> Four years later, I wrote my undergraduate Philosophy thesis on the Grateful Dead. I made the choice at that time to emphasize what I considered to be the more intrinsic aspects of their music rather than the obvious extrinsic ones. So I philosophized (some of it is a little embarrassing now!) not about their San Francisco heritage, their place among the other rock bands of the time, Jerry's country music bent. I didn't bring Owsley or Jack Kerouac into it. I stayed with the rhythms, the musical structure, and the specifics of the lyrical stories they told. Rhythmic patterns, high notes and low notes, mournful melodies, all have a different kind of significance than the band's relationship to the Jefferson Airplane or how Bill Graham may have manipulated their trajectory. I still bring my own perceptions, biases, cultural baggage, etc. to all that. Nevertheless, I think it's meaningful to say that my purpose was to analyze their music more intrinsically than extrinsically.<br /> <br /> Since that first concert, I attended about 200 more of them. The experience of the first one doesn't change, but my relationship to it does. It has gotten filtered through more experience and understanding, also through more similar kinds of immediate and unconditional experiences. Over time, I became more critical as I had more experiences with their music. When I listen to tapes of that first concert , I realize that though I was moved and impressed, they were likely not at their best on that night. It doesn't change how I felt that night, but it changes how I think about that night. What I would be moved by in subsequent years became different from what I was moved by on that first night. The same has held true with my love of opera, movies, and photography. Learning and experience has changed, to varying degrees, what I will now respond to when I respond in the immediate fashion you describe. <!--EndFragment--></p>

<p><!--StartFragment--><strong>John--</strong><br /> Read Sartre's <em>Existentialism Is A Humanism</em>. It's a concise essay. You don't understand him. <br /> <br /> The judgment that my approach to photographs and painting is better than the one you're suggesting is meant in the same spirit as your answer to Paul Wilkins on Jan. 7th at 4:50. I'm not morally better because of it. I just think it's better not always to look at photos and paintings through the kind of information filter you say you find necessary.<br /> <br /> You assumed that my choice of Riefenstahl is related to my tribe and that I have some extra stake in Nazis because of it. It wasn't. You assumed that I should find the masculinity in her Nuba work more compelling and a better example. I don't. You assumed that I was better equipped to discuss Dorian Gray than you. I doubt it.<br /> <br /> Felix understood that by extrinsic I was talking about context and that by intrinsic I was talking about a more personal relationship. Julie and Rick engaged me on how biographical information can get in the way of their appreciation of a photo or photographer. Tim addressed the matter of how what we know about who created the painting influences our assessment of it and wonders about its value aside from such a consideration. Is there something in the painting to respond to? Phylo took issue with the intrinsic/extrinsic dichotomy, with merit, seeking to move "intrinsic" toward being internal to the viewer or the viewer's relationship to the photo and "extrinsic" toward external to the photo. It's a good way to state it. Don comes out and says he buys the distinction but also doesn't see the two working as I do. <!--EndFragment--></p>

<p><!--StartFragment--><b>Don--</b><br /> Like you, I'm convinced that the origin of attraction is to a great extent a matter of personal 'archaeology.' I've never heard it put that way and it's a nice formulation. Nevertheless, although I think that those early personal formulations influence how we will respond, I find a qualitative difference in the kind of response I have to things like biography, status in the art world, awards won, era lived in, circle of friends of painter, influences on painter and influences painter had on others and color, light and shadow, perspective and composition. <!--EndFragment--></p>

<p>Fred:</p>

<p>I think a pertinent response to your original question most readily can be gleaned by considering the qualities of a certain genre of abstract photographs. I'm referring to a photograph from which the average viewer cannot discern, glean, or even guess the subject. Sometimes, I produce such photographs by starting with an identifiable object, e.g., a mountain behind a lake. However, when the project is finished, the subject is no longer identifiable.</p>

<p>The viewer can identify colors, shapes, patterns, textures, lines, exposure levels, contrast levels, etc., but identifying a subject per se isn't possible. As a result, the viewer's experience of the photograph is limited to such considerations and their interrelationships. Knowing who shot the photograph and/or his/her prejudices/likes/dislikes/ethnic background etc. may not add anything to the viewer's experience of the photograph.</p>

<p>To put something else into the mix, if I view a "representational" photograph, I clearly can discern the subject (if the photographer has done a decent job). Now, suppose that I make a conscious decision not to pay attention to the identity or identification of the subject. I decide to bracket away such considerations (in the manner of Husserl's <em><strong>epoche</strong></em>). As a result, I may experience nothing other than colors, shapes, patterns, textures, lines, exposure levels, contrast levels, etc..</p>

<p>I'm not sure, therefore, that a photograph has any intrinsic properties, qualities, etc. that exist independently from the intentionality of a viewer.</p>

<p>michael</p>

 

<p>Fred,<br>

The last line of your response to me:<br>

"If I knew a pedophile had tried to lie or hide something in a photograph he had taken, I'd be even more intrigued"<br>

is extrinsic. That's my point. The nature of the artist has become entwined with what is intrinsic. For you, in a good way; for me in a bad way.</p>

<p>[Minor side comment to Martin's post: I am reading a book now that claims we don't <em>look</em> at photos, we <em>watch</em> them.]</p>

<p>This is an interesting discussion. Thank you, Fred, for your thoughtful responses.</p>

<p>-Julie</p>

<p><!--StartFragment--><b>Michael--</b><br />I think something like color is an intrinsic property, even though it requires processing by humans to be understood or felt. Science shows that certain colors cause certain kinds of brain reactions, also that we humans "read" light certain ways. In that respect, photographs act on us, we don't act on them. That's what I mean by intrinsic. On the other hand, when we associate a certain color with, perhaps, some horrific moment of our childhood, we are responding to color more extrinsically, but still rather personally. When we respond because Van Gogh's use of color relates to the way the Impressionists used it, that is not as personal a matter (though I'm all for understanding color use in its historical context). When we respond more unconditionally or immediately, as Phylo put it, that is my idea of responding to something more intrinsic. All these types of experiences are on a continuum, of course, and I doubt any one can be completely ignored. <!--EndFragment--></p>

<p><!--StartFragment--><b>Julie--</b><br />Yes, I agree that the pedophile example is extrinsic. I am often, probably always, influenced by matters extrinsic to the photographs. I was originally thinking about the degree to which intrinsic properties have significance even beyond those extrinsic or situational concerns, and I think they do.<br /> <!--EndFragment--></p>