What constitutes a philosophy of photography?

<p>I have seen many threads posted in this forum, dealing with a variety of topics. Many of them address specific philosophical issues pertaining to photography, such as the following recent examples.<br>

http://www.photo.net/philosophy-of-photography-forum/00c46l ("Truth"), http://www.photo.net/philosophy-of-photography-forum/00c1g9 ("Inspiration"), http://www.photo.net/philosophy-of-photography-forum/00bo5n ("Photography and spirituality?")</p>

<p>Yet, I haven't yet seen any attempt to address what might be the most basic philosophical problem relating to photography - hence the title of this thread. Quite honestly, I haven't given a whole lot of thought to this, and so I have no answer to offer at this time. I was kinda hoping to see where the discussion leads. So have at it.</p>

<p>A wide ranging question with an equally wide range of possible response, including excursions into the domaine of questioning what is a photograph, what is a photographer, philosophy of art, the philosophy of the photographer and how it affects his photography, the reality and the non-reality of an image, the list is long and one can address your question in many ways.</p>

<p>Or to turn the question around a bit, as a photographer, what is YOUR philosophy of life and how does that affect your own philosophy of this graphic medium of expression?</p>

<p>Umm.. I think the 'Philosophy of life' is perhaps a little too loaded and could lead to even more of a discussion on subjectivity, relevant and the concept of how we see the world. So I think you need to work out what is the most important aspect of photography to you. Once you have decided upon that, creating a Philosophical analysis of this would not be difficult.</p>

<p>One way to look at it imo might be in the aspect of meditatation or contemplation on the nature of subject or manifestation [to be] photographed as such or an act of taking a picture as such, as well as possibility of creative change or impact in variations it may induce. Many of us know quite a bit about technique of photography and often are prepared to communicate in this way but creative considerations are seldom a subject and often dealt with rather superficially, probably implying the nature of personal creativity and various specifics, not to mention the philological challange in the matter.</p>

<p>Another aspect might be in the nature of lingering before one treaps the shotter. Or otherwise.</p>

<p>Yet another one is in somewhat similar personal state one may find self while beholding the image presented.</p>

<p>Naturally, one can always attempt to understand as to just why some people are so keen on trying to understand some thing or another and even make a philosophy out ot it. (-:</p>

<p>For one thing, one usually can easy answer a question: "What camera do you use?" and very few can offer any meaningful answer to a one: "What is you [life] philosophy?"</p>

<p>Arthur and Starvy: I have no doubt that one's philosophy of life, if there is such a thing, correlates somehow with one's philosophy of photography. Personally, I find the phrase "philosophy of life" vacuous; someone once said that the phrase is as meaningful as "botany of plants." The upshot is that I can't say that I have a philosophy of life. There are, of course, aspects of my life that I have found meaningful and I have tried to build upon them. Needless to say, they have influenced how I make photographs.</p>

<p>Ilia: I've had a "preference", to view photography in terms of process. Your suggestions seem to fit this view quite well.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Michael, Odds are I've misunderstood your question. If so, apologies for the interruption. But at the risk of being offtopic, some thoughts.<br>

A few years ago, I posted <a href="/philosophy-of-photography-forum/00VRIy">a thread</a> asking why people were active on this specific forum, what they were hoping to get from it etc. It was an interesting thread (to me anyway), and I think several of the answers given back then can play a role in your question now too. Maybe including your own :-) There are several other older threads that went off beyond the specific philosophical issues into a wider discussion on a "why photography" - problem is these discussions usually go all over the place. They deliver good thoughts, though, of course. But, a new fresh look on the subject, so let me not make many links to past discussions now.</p>

<p>Frankly, I have no way I could respond to the question. In part because I'm as much an amateur at philosophy as I am at photography - I do both because I like to, with some self-education in my pockets, and a sense of curiosity. And with that spotty background, I get no further to an answer as to considering why make photographs at all, what are photographs, how does communication and more specific visual communication work, and how does the interaction between these images and me have a meaning of sorts. Followed by a panicking thought: it's too much, too wide, touches too many related subjects....</p>

<p>I think the pink elephant in the room is the complicated relationship between things, how we perceive things and how the image we create translates perception, or the thing, or neither. Or both. On a personal level, we may have our individual beliefs whether there is such a thing as the thing itself, or whether there is only the perception of it. This will already have a tremendous impact on the starting point of discussing what photography is all about.</p>

<p>So the best I can do, is a very indirect response of unorganised thoughts. To me, photography helps reveal a vision I have (on my surroundings, on the world I live in, on people and what's more). Philosophy gives me keys and clues into reading the photos, into understanding relationships between things that I find or do not find in photos I've made, in choices made for viewpoints and so on. Philosophy helps me to question, critique and re-question.<br>

Photography expresses as well as reflects towards the inside. It can reveal or conceal, and in what happens it actually reveals a deeper drive that lies beneath it. In a sense of self-reflection, I look at my photos to find what is there as much as I do to find what is not there, as that's at least as telling too.<br>

The philosophy of photography? It's the question raised by the photo. It's communication, in all its usual flaws of miscommunication, dialects, poetic liberties, personal versus professional needs and some more. </p>

<p><em>"What constitutes a philosophy of photography?"</em><br /> <br /> a) Perhaps a coherent body of work.</p>

<p>AND/OR</p>

<p>b) Photos are a little bit like the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I like Wouter's personal take on this. I would simply add to that the suggestion that photography encites us to see the world in a personal way, and our image of some part of that, which can subsequently be regarded and reevaluated many times afterwards, is a notebook that can be updated continually as we reflect on how we saw what we saw. Yes, photography is a notebook for the photographer.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/photography">Photography </a>is defined as the art or practice of taking and processing photographs. <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philosophy">Philosophy </a>can be defined broadly as beliefs, values, or tenants. So, The philosophy of photography is a set of beliefs, values, and tenants surrounding the art or practice of taking and processing photographs. Art is a process, as is a practice. So we have photography as the process of taking and processing photographs. Hence, The philosophy of photography is a set of beliefs, values, tenants, and ideas surrounding the process of taking and processing photographs. Beliefs, values, tenants, and ideas about photography don't exist in isolation from other beliefs, values, tenants, and ideas about everything else. A process is an activity, involves doing where doing involves our whole being. So a philosophy of photography is constituted by everything.</p>

<p>Photography is both noun and verb. Something people look at hanging on the wall. The process of making is part of the photographer's role. The process of viewing is part of the viewer's role. The maker also views and the viewer also makes. Then there's the thing that's made and viewed.</p>

<p>Michael, when I look at any course guide under Philosophy, the introductory courses are usually called Philosophy 101, etc. The advanced courses are usually about specific philosophers or well-known philosophical issues, such as Truth, Ethics, Aesthetics, Freedom and Determinism, etc. But even the intro courses don't dwell too much on What is Philosophy? They get right into philosophies.</p>

<p>That may relate to how to construe a Philosophy of Photography. Photos are of a moment in time (at least). Framing applies limits, negation, and perspective. What constitutes the Philosophy <em>of</em> something like Art or Photography or Motorcycle Maintenance is the <em>application</em> of greater ideas to a more specific discipline, process, and set of things (like photos) OR the formation of greater ideas emanating from considering some of the specifics of, for example, photography.</p>

<p>"It is easier to gain enlightenment than to explain enlightenment"<br>

Supreme Master Ching Hai</p>

<p>The question that arises is this: If it is easier to gain enlightenment than to explain it, how easy is it to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Hai">SELL</a> it?</p>

<p>As long as the Supreme Master does not mean to imply that easier is in fact better, sure. It is easier. But both activities have a different scope, different goal and different method. It's easier to milk a cow than to construct a quantum-computer too.<br /> ____<br /> I kind of like the notion of photography being a personal notebook for the photographer, but it negates the part of sharing/showing. Which is pretty integral to photography, I think.<br /> Thinking a bit further along the (fuzzy) lines of my earlier post, basically I guess the "communication" part (even if that too is a very broad term) applies to many creative expressions. Not only own attempts, but watching a painting, listening music, reading a poem - any. There is an internal reciprocal dialogue between me, as consumer of the work, and the work itself. Some works keep renewing themselves with every encounter, the dialogue deepens, sidetracks, grows sweet or sour.....Well, I guess I'm not saying a lot of news here.<br /> In a way, in making photos, it's arguably a similar dialogue between subject and myself. Some places, I literally have 100s of pictures of the same thing, all just fractionally different. And yet, I cannot seem to resist taking that same photo again - still searching for words in the dialogue. <br />But the actual activity of making photos is a fairly different process for different photographers. So to pose this as part of a "the" philosophy of photography, I wouldn't dare. But as part of mine, it fits pretty well.</p>

<p>Wouter, to "communicate" I'd probably want to add (or substitute) "express". The reason is that communication suggests the passage of information or knowledge whereas expression can be more about feelings, not necessarily explaining those feelings but showing them. When I looked up communication and expression, these were the differences, and one word that was used in defining "express" was "gesture," which I can really relate to.</p>

<p>I can also relate to a lot of what you said. Something a philosophy of photography would probably address is the similarities and differences between photography and other art mediums. There are things that are unique about photos, different qualities from what paintings and music have, that would be part of a philosophical exploration, and also what qualities are very similar among them.</p>

<p>Where I'd look here is in photography's intimate connection to the world it takes picture of. It's one of the reasons "truth," "accuracy,"and "what is real" come up so often when discussing photos and not as often when discussing music or painting.</p>

<p>Gentlemen: Your responses are amazing. Having just recently moved, there's a bunch of calls I need to make, so stay tuned; I will be back.</p>

<p>From the perspective of individual photographers especially those whose work has a public audience, having a stated philosophy about how one approaches their work and presenting such to the public, can be an important element in how one wishes the public to view their body of work. Will be less meaningful for some types of photographic work than others. For instance far more important for a photo journalist or nature photographer than say a commercial advertising photographer or someone into shooting urban pets. For instance on my own web page, something I crafted several years ago that I probably need to update a wee bit:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.davidsenesac.com/david_philosophy1.html">http://www.davidsenesac.com/david_philosophy1.html</a></p>

<p>Most serious photographers in this digital era, much less ordinary people holding compact digital cameras, don't even bother to create a minimal artist statement when presenting their work in public. In fact I argue many don't really want their audience to know what they are doing in post processing.</p>

<p>David Senesac<br /><a href="http://www.davidsenesac.com/">http://www.davidsenesac.com</a></p>

<p>What constitutes a philosophy of art, or of science , or of engineering, or of law, or of medecine, or of music composition, or of economics, or of.....?</p>

<p>Any philosophy of photography is related primarily to that of the creator of images. Truths and non-truths are found in many human endeavours and because a photograph may be a convincing reproduction (two dimensional facsimile) of some object or person does not, a priori, make it a truth. Reality, or an approximation to it, is not truth. The photographic facsimile does not confer any philosophical attribute to the image. The visual communication can carry philosophical qualities, artistic merit or other meaning only if the photographer creates an image of that type. Without the image creator the photograph and photography are mere tools or media and devoid of any philosophy per se. Philosophy of photography has little meaning for me, only the philosophy, or not, of its practitioner.</p>

<p>Arthur - "...or other meaning only if the photographer creates an image of that type."</p>

<p>Many types, true. Photography is the art or practice of taking and processing photographs. I suppose to narrow the scope of philosophy of photography we can exclude practice, non-art.</p>

<p>David makes a good point and I can see where a philosophy of photography can analogize to a mission statement. "Philosophically I favor realism and my work reflects that." or "I'm not philosophically opposed to realism, but don't pursue it."</p>

<p>Arthur, I was merely speaking from my own experience when I brought up truth and reality. Many times, I've heard people say about a photo, "Wow, I've been there but never saw it like that." Or I've had subjects of my portraits be surprised with how a photo looks because they were there and had no idea that what we were experiencing together could be translated into a photo in that way. I think it does make a difference that a painter starts with a blank canvas. One can watch him paint but, at the start, the outside observer will have no idea what the subject matter or the scene is possibly going to be. If one is in the presence of a photographer, one has a pretty good idea of what he's pointing the camera at and . . . then . . . can be extremely surprised at what the resulting photo looks like, given what the observer may have seen with his own eyes. I do think this is a pretty distinctive difference between, say, photography and painting. I'm certainly not claiming that photos tell the truth more than other mediums. I'm saying that many viewers consider the connection between the photo and the world to be of some importance and that connection affects their (and my) way of viewing a photo.</p>

<p>When I see a war photo, especially in a journalistic situation, I assume that war happened. When a see a painting of a war, I don't, though it might have. When I see a photo of a bunch of buildings on a street with a woman walking down the street and a man crossing in front of her with a dog, I assume that took place. When I see a painting of such a scene, I am just as likely to think that was purely a product of the imagination of the painter. I'm not saying either is better. I'm just noticing the difference. And I'm NOT saying all photos have that aspect or quality and I'm not saying they should. I'm just noticing it as an interesting philosophical consideration about photography <em>per se</em>.</p>

<p>While I agree that the philosophy of the photographer is profoundly important, many other things come into play for me. I look at photos, for example, of great moments in sports and the philosophy of the photographer doesn't usually come to mind. The event itself does. That event is important to the photo and to the philosophy of photography. Portraits of Marilyn Monroe (which we've discussed before) surely convey something of the photographer's philosophy but they also convey significant things about the woman (perhaps the persona or star) herself. They also convey things about stardom per se and our relationship to movie stars as well as the camera's relationship to movie stars. The photographer is but one important aspect of photography to consider in a philosophical approach.</p>

<p>I will attempt to address some of the posts in this thread with greater specificity in due course. For now, I will focus on one of Fred's comments. He correctly stated that discussions in academic philosophy don't deal a whole lot with what constitutes philosophy. There's a reason for this. The nature of philosophy is itself a thorny philosophical problem. Here are two approaches proffered by Wittgenstein; neither of them is straightforward.</p>

<p><strong>(1) Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. (2) </strong><strong>What is your aim in philosophy?--To shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.</strong><br>

<strong><br /></strong>I suspect that this particular problem is of most interest to those engaged in philosophy. Outside of philosophic circles (and not necessarily academic ones), it may not have a great deal of importance. Yet, PN has chosen to incorporate a discussion forum specifically intended to address philosophical issues related to various facets of photography. </p>

<p>Damright - language. Mike, we gotta ride this one big time. Because the most of previous postings here apparently have failed to make it clear on two things:</p>

<p>1). Works of philosophy has been conducted by the means of language (mostly). Say from Plato to Descartes roughly every philohead haven't seen as much as one single photo in his life time and run on one language.</p>

<p>(Just think of what sort of impact on Renes philosophy would viewing of high-res, wall-to-wall add pictures of French ladys underwear would have if he had to see it on average 274 times a day without asking? His whole life? And when going on explaining things to a Swedish noble princess? In writing?)</p>

<p>2). Quantity of photography produced, presented and considered by philosophers here is growing very, very fast. Much of it is going right across the languages and national cultures. And most of us now operate in two or three languages.</p>

<p>Which, among other things, brings us to a possibility or even necessity of expressing philosophical conclusion in form of, well - a photographic image. That is, contrary to the traditional language-only based form of communication, previously used, - we got new medium, eh?</p>

<p>But, the real question still remains: is there any yet undiscovered philosophical truth we can jump on, so to say, photographicaly or do we all know it all already?</p>

<p>A philosophy of photography is essential for those who would discuss and criticize photographs, optional (but potentially convenient) for those who create images, and of no use whatsoever to the image itself.</p>

<p>A philosophy of photography might inspire, explain, or justify an image or justify not making an image under certain conditions.</p>

<p>"But, the real question still remains: is there any yet undiscovered philosophical truth we can jump on, so to say, photographically"</p>

<p>Methinks not.</p>

<p>You find your own truth in a photograph... philosophically speaking or otherwise...the otherwise has always been somewhat of a mystery.</p>

<p>Sort of like why am I here and what is it all about?</p>

<p>Eh, but this is existential question, it has been answered many times and basically has nothing to do with photograpy as such. My argument is: this does not constitute philosophical problem of photography if people simply take pictures just because they can.</p>