Truth

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Very thoughtful points, Charles.</p>

<p>______________________________________</p>

<p>We don't get much truth from a single set of facts.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>"Does the Greene photo exist in some sort of factual vacuum without the benefit of biographies about Marilyn and without the benefit of Picasso and others who have shown us more and given us more to think about?"</p>

<p>I think that the Greene photo can be viewed and appreciated as if it were in a factual semi-vacuum. Perhaps that is part of its art and it doesn't have to be an image of all that is woman. Still, as you, Fred, say, a most important part of appreciating art is appreciating point of view: of the artist, the subject, and the viewer. There are many truths in and surrounding an artistic image and art appreciation involves a lot of learning about context and history, both personal and collective. We don't have much of an appreciation from a single set of facts, nor do we without also looking at other art produced then contemporaneously, and before, and since. To enjoy art isn't the same as appreciating it, the latter taking a lot more work. I think I've made past mistakes in not fully appreciating the hard work behind the contributions of the regulars in this forum.</p>

<p>It isn't just that all truth is relative. We also have Kurt Gödel and his first incompleteness theorem. John Allen Paulos in <em>Beyond Innumeracy</em> writes parenthetically "Conceivably Boris Pasternak had Gödel's theorem in mind when he wrote, "What is laid down, ordered, factual, is never enough to embrace the whole truth."" That theorem is the "so-called" first incompleteness theorem. I read that to say that any representation of an absolute truth is inherently incomplete, not absolute. I think that is where sign and symbol come to our aid, as suggestive of depth and breath we can't ever fully name, but that we can appreciate anyway.</p>

<p>From a Fred post in another thread, Jackson Pollack, an example of an abstract and I soooo don't want to see a theme of alienation in the canvas because in it there is so much of inter relatedness in an incomprehensible whole, you beautiful canvas you:</p>

<p> <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/No._5%2C_1948.jpg">http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/No._5%2C_1948.jpg</a></p>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"there is so much of inter relatedness in an incomprehensible whole"</em></p>

<p>Can't that be seen as a form of alienation?</p>

<p><em>"you beautiful canvas you"</em></p>

<p>Alienation can be beautiful and beauty can be alienating.</p>

<p>Alienation can work against the production of emotions we might expect from the beautiful canvas and instead provide the kind of spark Pollock's canvas provides.</p>

<p>Getting back to incomprehensibility, which you brought up and which seems important, I was reading about alienation and came across this, which might be helpful in thinking about Pollock:</p>

<p><em>"'Information overload' or the so-called 'data tsunami' are well-known information problems confronting contemporary man and, thus, meaninglessness is turned on its head."</em></p>

<p>Could Pollock's canvases be like a "data tsunami"?</p>

[charleswood]

<p>- Could Pollock's canvases be like a "data tsunami"?</p>

<p>Yeah, I like that. I read a little bit about him just now. <a href="http://www.forestedgepta.com/feforms/Pollock-Oct07.pdf">http://www.forestedgepta.com/feforms/Pollock-Oct07.pdf</a></p>

<p>At the end is a Drip Painting Art Project for young students with emphasis on easier clean up!</p>

<p>I also see that his work is the subject of many debates and is described as very physical and demanding. That physicality might be a way he worked out with information overload while expressing it at the same time. So in a way, yeah, it can be one thing <em>and</em> another. Interesting point.</p>

<p> </p>

[iliafarniev]

<p>Hmmm. Anything can be truth and it is not necesserily do something or another. Meanwhile one may learn to discern between nonfalsifiable truth and contextually falsifiable truth(s). Which is important because the truths can be many and they usually are variable.</p>

<p>"- Could Pollock's canvases be like a "data tsunami"? "</p>

<p>Just as much as it can be like any two random words put togeter as a comparison, metaphor or hyperbola.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Photography can convey truth in form of grand answers to factual questions: <br>

The "truth" is:</p>

<ul>

<li>that war is hell, Jeff Wall "<a href="http://wpmedia.blogs.vancouversun.com/2012/05/blogdead.jpg">Dead Troops Talk</a>" (fine art)!;</li>

<li>that civilians are dying: Nick Ut's, the<a href="http://newswire.kulmun.be/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/napalm-girl-88f02cbaad205d1edf5f19e683c39e6cb4df9c3c-s6-c10.jpg"> Napalm girl</a> (documentary);</li>

<li>that tanks can be stopped and dissidence is possible: Jeff Widener, <a href="/philosophy-of-photography-forum/%20http:/cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/china060412/t01_90605094.jpg%20">Tiananmen Square</a> (in this special case, a few hours later, contradicted by facts); and </li>

<li>that children are dying from hunger: Kevin Carter: <a href="http://prateekchandrajha.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/starving_sudanese_girl_kevin_carter_1993.jpg">South Sudan</a> (documentary).</li>

</ul>

<p>These pictures are "true" in some concrete or general sense. They are not true in relationship to anything, IMO. </p>

<p>Science "<em>does make claims that most scientists would call true</em>"<br>

Siegfried, I think all scientist approach some knowledge as irrefutable, but in principle always about subject matters that are to be verified over and over again by researchers in light of new knowledge and the development of ever more precise and sophisticated methodologies and testing tools. Absolute truth does not exist in science.</p>

<p> </p>

[charleswood]

<p>Anders I'll muddy the water with alternate points of view for the same pictures (not the last one though):</p>

<p>Dead Troops: War is selective hell. The same war is hell for some and not for others (photographer doesn't experience a hell equal to the wounded or fallen). And some war is less hell than others, Granada for example, or Panama. And what is the factual question that the statement "war is hell" answers? Is the factual question "What is war?"</p>

<p>Napalm girl: Grand question: Should the press be embedded instead so that such pictures don't get made.</p>

<p>Tiananmen Square - One person's dissident is another person's criminal might be the grand answer that this photograph illustrates. Some would use that picture to prosecute the criminal, some would use it as an example of legitimate protest.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Allen asked:</p>

<p><em>"What is truth <strong>in photography?</strong>"</em> [emphasis added]</p>

<p>Aside from—or in addition to—forensic, logical, grammatical, verbal, literal, accuracy-oriented, and perspectival approaches to truth, I like to think there are emotional, experiential, and visual truths, even art historical truths, expressed by and/or conveyed by photos and photographers.</p>

<p>Weston's pepper and Duchamp's urinal allow, help, or force us to see these things as we haven't. Picasso stilled for us what we might otherwise only see in a quick snap of our heads to and fro.</p>

<p>Allen mentioned Sontag, who also said:</p>

<p><em>"the camera's rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses"</em></p>

<p>Negation is so important to truth, and particularly to the truths of photography . . . the impact and import of what I leave out in order to frame a shot, the periphery omitted but having its own kind influence. Photography requires me to negate in this way. That consistently imposes itself on photography's truths. It might suggest an element of photographic alienation to be further explored.</p>

<p>To get at the truth of photography, we might have to look at how it ever expresses or conveys anything, what it <em>does</em> possess in addition to all its so-called propositional and logical shortcomings.</p>

<p>Are we too accustomed to truth being revealed to get how much truth there is in what lies hidden?</p>

<p>Do you ever <em>feel</em> truth instead of or in addition to knowing it?</p>

[charleswood]

<p>One question to raise is "Who is the intended audience?" What is being expressed to whom?</p>

<p>That additional question broadens the meaning of negation: there is negation also in the sense that one photograph can present a single event as outstanding when it isn't 'out-standing' considering other facts and circumstances. What is or isn't outstanding is based on our cherished beliefs, at least in part.</p>

<p>For example, the Tiananmen Square photograph was not, according to an interview with a journalist who was there, the only such picture of the same subject that <em>could</em> have been taken: many people were obstructing tanks during those hours. Rugged individualism is a cherished belief in the United States. The capture and selection of one photograph of one dissident is a value judgment. The Tiananmen Square photograph was taken and editorially selected with an audience in mind.</p>

<p>A sole individual acting alone against all odds by standing up to a tank had high value in our culture here. Here we are biased by our own values. We place higher value on a lone dissident than on the coordinated workings of a group. For us, a group might be great, but Rambo type agency is for great praise. In some cultures, Rambo style agency is for shame. Admired agency is that which is accomplished within the tight confines of a group, despite collective values, but within collective values as opposed to show boating all alone, hard to see when in a culture where show boating is praised. But if you think Eric Burton <em>without</em> the Animals you get a sense of what I might mean.</p>

<p>So by what a photograph doesn't show we often find a point at which we can examine our own cherished cultural beliefs. I don't think we can do that without a broad understanding of history and of cultures. There is just no other way in my view to know what is hidden and what is on display in a photograph.</p>

<p>Negation, related to point of view, operates by the mechanics of subjective judgment. Our subjective judgment is operated most powerfully by our cherished beliefs, with or without our being aware of it.</p>

[michaellinder]

<p>Anders - "Absolute" truth does exist in science … that is, until a new paradigm is discovered and adopted. Then, it's back to the drawing board.</p>

<p>Fred - OK, so I'm a little hardheaded sometimes. I'm so accustomed to thinking about truth as an epistemological issue that I occasionally have difficulty looking at it from a broader perspective. Just as people can be gifted in many ways other than intellectual, so can truth exist for people in different modes.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Michael - ""Absolute" truth does exist in science..."</p>

<p>Nope, and indeed you do go on to say that absolute truth doesn't exist in science when you describe how science's truths are discarded all the time because they are not considered absolute by scientific method, are always considered provisional truths by science.</p>

<p> </p>

[michaellinder]

<p>Charles: Close, but no cigar. You haven't refuted my position just by stating "Nope." I suggest that you read Thomas Kuhn's <strong>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</strong>. If you'd rather take a shortcut, try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Michael, absolute truths are valid for all time. Science produces no such thing. I don't mean to be rude by saying "Nope." I'm trying to keep the definitions clear about what an absolute truth is, what a fact is, and what are other truths that are that can never claim to be absolute, but nevertheless exist.</p>

<p>If science's claims were absolute, they would never change, they would never be replaced at a later time. I hope that is clear. Also, I didn't refute your position by saying 'Nope', I went on to describe your claim as self-contradictory and said why it contains a self-contradiction. I hope no offense is taken by my pointing that out.</p>

[michaellinder]

<p>No offense, at all, Charles. Notice that I put the term "Absolute" in quotes. I guess, though, that this wasn't clear enough. I don't believe that any worthwhile scientist thinks that science discovers absolute truth; they discover new paradigms.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Here is an example from one of my photographs that tells a truth indirectly. <a href="/photo/10757210">http://www.photo.net/photo/10757210</a> . It contains a clue about what that truth is, but the truth has been otherwise left out of the photograph.</p>

<p>The clue is the tie off in the foreground. It is a tie off for rescue workers to use when the river rages. The truth told is that although the river in the picture looks tame, it isn't. At times it rages and lives are threatened or lost as suggested by the presence of the tie off in the lower right of the frame. The photograph has another layer of interpretation. It suggests that rivers can't really be tamed. The picture expresses the idea that nature cannot be tamed. The picture expresses a point of view. My point of view is that human kind does not tame nature really. It is a cherished belief of mine, something I hold to be true, but which can't be an absolute truth.</p>

<p>Do others have examples from their own body of work that tells a truth, either directly or indirectly? Ho does the interaction between figure and ground work in your photograph to tell your truth?</p>

<p> </p>

[charleswood]

<p>OK, thanks for the clarification. I missed the quotes and your meaning entirely!</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Michael: ""<em>Absolute" truth does exist in science … that is, until a new paradigm is discovered and adopted</em>.""<br>

- so it is indeed not "absolute truth? The main message of Kühn, who introduced the theory on paradigm(a) in science, concerned exactly paradigm <em >shifts </em>so according to him the only "truth", if you wish, was, that the prevailing truth of the moment is doomed to change.<br>

<br>

Charles, you are right that different truths (sic!) - even the language does not permit a plural of the word (or does it ??) are competing. Jeff Wall, with his dead Russian soldiers is sure to have aimed in show war as hell, and Kevin Carter, hunger in Sudan. When it comes to Jeff Widener's shot on Tiananmen Square, he indeed wished to convey the "truth" about the will and power of individuals against brutal force. You are right that the "wars" in Panama and Granada, were for most not hell. I remember them as television shows, political propaganda, and regime change. I don't remember any photos from them, but I do remember the television crews on the beaches waiting for the troops to arrive at primetime. Another type of truth about modern war.<br /><br>

<br>

When I don't make remarks on the question of "truth" and the various works of art mentioned above, it is mainly because I don't see the connection apart from some historical exceptions like Picasso and his "Guernica" (1937) showing the barbary of war or Goya's Execution of 3rd of May (1808) and some similar works of art in specific historical contexts. <br>

Art does not create or show any truth. Art is mostly occupied with putting questions more than answers. Art questions any current truth we might believe in. To quote Duchamps, who always seem to pop up in these discussion together with his Fountain, R Mutt: "<em >The biggest enemy of art, is good taste</em>" (reference to "ugly pictures" elsewhere!). Truth and art are only distant relatives. Good art provokes us to question our current beliefs and knowledge and invite us to search for truth elsewhere. The beauty of the world might be "a truth" that has occupied arts during centuries, at least since the Renaissance, but that "working truth" of the arts ended some 150 years ago.<br>

<br>

<br>

</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Anders - "Good art provokes us to question our current beliefs and knowledge and invite us to search for truth elsewhere."</p>

<p>I like your statement. Let me ask you, how would you answer Fred's question. That is, Greene's <a href="http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m08ezfAimy1qzfye6o1_1280.jpg">Marilyn Monroe: The Black Sitting </a>- Fred asked an open ended question: "Does the Greene photo exist in some sort of factual vacuum without the benefit of biographies about Marilyn and without the benefit of Picasso and others who have shown us more and given us more to think about?"</p>

<p>Is Greene's photo of Marilyn good art? Or is it simply a picture of beauty?</p>

<p>Anyone else want to weigh in on that question, feel free.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>Art does not create or show any truth. Art is mostly occupied with putting questions more than answers. Art questions any current truth we might believe in. Good art provokes us to question our current beliefs and knowledge and invite us to search for truth elsewhere.</em> <strong>--Anders</strong></p>

<p><em>To get at the truth of photography, we might have to look at how it ever expresses or conveys anything, what it does possess in addition to all its so-called propositional and logical shortcomings.</em><br>

<em>Are we too accustomed to truth being revealed to get how much truth there is in what lies hidden?</em><br>

<em>Do you ever feel truth instead of or in addition to knowing it?</em> <strong>--Fred</strong></p>

<p>I don't see Anders and I as being terribly far apart when it comes to art and photography and what it can accomplish. The similarities in our thinking (for example what Anders calls "putting questions more than answers" might be seen as somewhat similar to what I call "what lies hidden") seem much more potent than the definitional differences in the ways we're using a single word, truth. We are, together, standing on fertile ground upon which to build, if we so choose.</p>

<p>This is why I think Charles's approach of actually looking at photos is a good one. It avoids semantical debate and it's constructive. I'll look for an example myself, Charles.</p>

[michaellinder]

<p>Anders - Again, I was speaking tongue-in-cheek when I quoted the term "Absolute." Paradigm shifts are not necessarily gentle, sometimes creating radical new approaches to scientific theory. I'd have to reread Kuhn, but I suspect that his account does not provide a great deal of room for absolutes, except perhaps in stating (as I recall) that no paradigm is immune from being discarded in favor of a better one.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>In portraits, vulnerability can be a significant form of photographic truth.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[AJHingel]

<p>Charles, I'll come back to Marilyn, but first Pollock.</p>

<p>Fred wrote earlier on<br>

<em>"'Information overload' or the so-called 'data tsunami' are well-known information problems confronting contemporary man and, thus, meaninglessness is turned on its head."</em><br>

<em>Could Pollock's canvases be like a "data tsunami"?</em></p>

<p>I would say yes, like a Symphony of Benjamin Britten can be listened to as a "data tsunami".<br>

It is actually interesting to look at Pollocks paintings from the point of view of writings, iconography and music.<br>

In the earlier works of Pollock, during the 40's, he did in fact use words and iconographics in many of his paintings like here in his "<a href="http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/jackson-pollock/stenographic-figure#supersized-artistPaintings-185301">stenographic figure</a>" and later on one can (rarely) find hidden words on his canvases, like in his breakthrough work: "<a href="http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/Jackson-Pollock-1943-Mural-631.jpg">Mural</a>", a couple of years later, where his full name is written all over the top and structures the whole composition.<br>

However a "data tsunami", in terms of written text is narmally not what can be found in Pollocks paintings. Others have gone much further, like the French painter <strong>Simon Hantaï</strong> in his master piece, rightly called "<a href="http://www.paulrodgers9w.com/BlogEntries/image/SH_ecriture_rose.jpg">Pink writing</a>" (Ecriture rose) influenced by Pollock, one finds the whole (unreadable) texts of the Old and New Testimony, plus greater parts of Freud's writings, copied in pink ink, creating the background for an almost abstract painting bigger than any of Pollocks big canvases.<br>

In both these cases, the main tsunami of data consist, in Pollock's case, of his Jungian subconsciousness of intuition, thinking, sensation, and emotion or feeling. There is no general <strong>Truth</strong> here to be found, only (sic!) a travel of the subconsciousness of the painter (unknown to the viewer) and that of the individual viewer (also unknown).</p>

<p>Fred's fine portrait above, could be "read" within the same paradigm, IMO.</p>

[iliafarniev]

<p>I would think the term <strong>truth</strong> as used on this thread is vocabular mistake. Dramatic photos from war can be beter described as adequate emotional and/or informational message or otherwise better term can be found/applied. The <strong>truth</strong> as a term hardly describes the sume of effects the image produces and only partly applicable to some of them in some contextes.</p>

<p>"Nope. ..." (-: Should one say: Yeap? Honestly, Charles, what in you opinion such a statment as 1+1=2 is lacking in to be classified as absolute truth? Or 1+2=3 ? Or chemical basics of molecular formations of elements such as Silicium dioxide or Aluminium oxide?</p>

<p>Where this rhetoric line will go if you replace Absolute with Universal?</p>

<p>What if NG shot was staged? Will it make picture a). less true b) more true c). different true d). something else?</p>

<p>The thing is folks, if we want to understand the nature of impact photographic imaging has we have to develope usefull terminology. But if we want to keep terminology static then our understanding is bound to be limited.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Re: the Milton Greene photo of Marilyn . . .</p>

<p>Greene, like Avedon, provides a bridge between fashion/glamour photography and fine art photography. One of the ways that is manifest is if we are taken in by the photo as well as being taken in by the celebrity or the dress. Appreciating the photo, as much as the star who's its subject, seems to me a more abstract way of looking, a more transcendent way if you will. The obvious here is how small Marilyn is in the frame (though still so much larger than life), how shadow and light interplay catches our attention, the use of negative space, the more abstract sense of emergence (as opposed to a more concrete sense of "pretty face").</p>

<p>1+1=2 is often (appropriately) used as an example of a Truth, with a capital T. We typically would not use as an example a child counting one ball and adding another ball and getting two balls, though true, as being in the same league as an understanding of the Truth behind the more abstract concept of 1+1=2. </p>

<p>Abstraction has an important role in Truth and in art. That's why I find it meaningful to use (if even with poetic license, which would seem appropriate to art) Truth in relationship to art. I actually see that use as less static than insisting Truth remain limited to propositions and information.</p>

<p><em>"Is Greene's photo of Marilyn good art? Or is it simply a picture of beauty?"</em></p>

<p>Both.</p>

<p>Transcendence requires a ground. Abstraction allows for instances of more concrete manifestation.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Charles, your river photo with accompanying text is a good example of a photo dealing with time and movement in different ways than we have become used to. The actual showing or at least the strong suggestion of potential is an important turn and it moves the photo beyond the present, beyond the stilled moment. </p>