kitchen life # 63 ~ don't know how much more of this I can take
Monday, February 2, 2015 at 05:08PM 
trash can ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIn a recent essay, Responsibilty and Truth in Photography, Jörg M. Colberg - founder and editor of Conscientious Photography Magazine - wrote:
You can take a photograph in such a way that even though it is a complete artifact (all photographs are), it will look like an objective depiction of whatever was in front of the camera’s lens .... This is territory that many people find hard to navigate. If a camera is a little machine that faithfully records what is in front of it and that displays just that, then obviously it’s the photographer who screws up if there is a problem. Now, a camera is not at all just some little machine that does that. It never faithfully records what was in front of it, and the many steps that lie between the pressing of the shutter’s button and the display of the resulting image (in whatever form) make the connection between reality and picture very, very difficult.
While Colberg tends to be of the same mind as I am, re: (his words) "photography theory sounds really good, at least on paper (assuming, of course, it’s not the usual academic drivel, with terms taken from semi-nonsensical French philosophy thrown in for good measure)", he nevertheless can't help but to delve into the whole "never faithfully records", and, "the many steps that lie between the pressing of the shutter’s button and the display of the resulting image" thing , both of which, according to academic theory, results in making "the connection between reality and picture very, very difficult."
Sure, sure. A picture of something is not the thing itself. Sure, sure. A picture maker can employ many steps in the making of a picture. However, IMO, drawing from those facts the conclusion that a picture can not faithfully, in fact never, record what was in front of the camera is pure flapdoodle and green paint.
Sure, sure. Many different interpretations can be had from the viewing of a photograph, as many as there are viewers, but, despite the number of differing interpretations / understandings / meanings to be had (many of which may have little relationship to the picture maker's intentions), that in no way means that the picture from which they are made is a not faithful recording / depiction / representation of what was in front of the camera.
A factual / accurate depiction of a chosen referent and the interpretations / understandings /meanings deduced from it are two entirely different, although related, domains. One involves seeing, the other involves feeling and thinking.
That written, there are always viewers to whom a picture is just a picture and there are those who must turn a picture into an academic critical analysis, intellectual labyrinth, psycho-analytical exercise. Those who prefer the latter seem to be those with an surfeit of art education who seem to need to convince themselves that they got their money's worth, student loan / education wise. They never give it a rest.
Although, even one of the all-time greats (art theory writing and speaking wise), Jeff Wall seems to have given it rest:
I think the process of deconstructing photography as a rhetoric has reached a point of exhaustion.
Amen to that.
Reader Comments (2)
You say:
"That written, there are always viewers to whom a picture is just a picture and there are those who must turn a picture into an academic critical analysis, intellectual labyrinth, psycho-analytical exercise. Those who prefer the latter seem to be those with an surfeit of art education who seem to need to convince themselves that they got their money's worth, student loan / education wise. They never give it a rest."
I have to say, despite the fact that I actually enjoy quite a lot of your photography, that the above is a bit rich, given that a good deal of the writing on your blog seems to be courtesy of Susan Sontag or some other high-falutin curator or other worthy. You are nothing if not wordy. That said (NOT, for god's sake, 'that written') I think your still-life photographs are really enjoyable.
Constructive discussions about photography give you something to build on. Reductive ones self-referentially follow themselves until the whole exercise seems pointless.
Debating the faithfulness of photography is reductive exercise. Discussing how a photograph is both a reference to a thing and a thing itself (forms and lines) is more constructive.
Aside: was going to say 'recurses in upon itself' but it seems recursion is still a computer science thing that hasn't evolved a vernacular definition. Give it time.