Review of: Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy: The Legacy of Carla Lonzi, Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi (eds) (2020) London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 296 pp., ISBN 978-1-78453-732-6, h/bk, £95.00
{"title":"Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy: The Legacy of Carla Lonzi, Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi (eds) (2020)","authors":"Luisa Lorenza Corna","doi":"10.1386/pop_00053_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00053_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy: The Legacy of Carla Lonzi, Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi (eds) (2020)\u0000 London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 296 pp.,\u0000 ISBN 978-1-78453-732-6, h/bk, £95.00","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47816069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyses the aesthetics of digital compression as revealed in Thomas Ruff’s Jpegs series of photographs (2004–07). These images exhibit a poor standard of digital picture resolution fixed as large-scale, high-quality, lustrous C-type photographic prints. With reference to Vilém Flusser’s writing on photography, I argue that Ruff’s work discloses a ‘horror of digital photography’: a system of automated representation, which inverts our relationship to the photographic image.
{"title":"Jpegs: Thomas Ruff and the horror of digital photography","authors":"I. Rothwell","doi":"10.1386/pop_00049_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00049_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the aesthetics of digital compression as revealed in Thomas Ruff’s Jpegs series of photographs (2004–07). These images exhibit a poor standard of digital picture resolution fixed as large-scale, high-quality, lustrous C-type photographic prints. With reference to Vilém Flusser’s writing on photography, I argue that Ruff’s work discloses a ‘horror of digital photography’: a system of automated representation, which inverts our relationship to the photographic image.","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47022210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, we discuss the insights object-oriented ontology (OOO) offers in understanding the photographic process. Following Kant’s distinction between noumena and phenomena and Heidegger’s Geviert, Harman’s OOO focuses on the real versus sensory aspects of all objects of experience. In our analysis, we explore its implications for intentionality, signification and revelation in photography. OOO locates being within all objects and stands in opposition to the post-Cartesian correlationism influential in the continental tradition. In Heidegger’s terms, the still camera exhibits both presence and readiness at hand. However, this readiness at hand is so ubiquitous that it is easy to overlook what makes it unique amongst the tools at our disposal. We argue that in the field of visual experience, the camera does what Kant believed impossible. It has the potential to reduce epistemic loss and transform the phenomenology of conscious experience into the noumenology of non-conscious awareness of the real object.
{"title":"Object-oriented photography: A speculative essay on the photography of essence","authors":"Bob Ryan, A. Price","doi":"10.1386/pop_00051_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00051_1","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we discuss the insights object-oriented ontology (OOO) offers in understanding the photographic process. Following Kant’s distinction between noumena and phenomena and Heidegger’s Geviert, Harman’s OOO focuses on the real versus sensory aspects of all objects of experience. In our analysis, we explore its implications for intentionality, signification and revelation in photography. OOO locates being within all objects and stands in opposition to the post-Cartesian correlationism influential in the continental tradition. In Heidegger’s terms, the still camera exhibits both presence and readiness at hand. However, this readiness at hand is so ubiquitous that it is easy to overlook what makes it unique amongst the tools at our disposal. We argue that in the field of visual experience, the camera does what Kant believed impossible. It has the potential to reduce epistemic loss and transform the phenomenology of conscious experience into the noumenology of non-conscious awareness of the real object.","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48425399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article takes as its focus the concept of the ‘afterimage’ and its relationship to memory, the synaesthetic experience of perception and the multisensory turn within the study of photographic images. Afterimages have consistently been described as phenomena of visual persistence where, optically, a recorded moment of the past leaks into the present and remains visible before us on our retinas. By recasting this originary understanding of an afterimage as simply a ghostly, optical occurrence and insisting that the phenomenon exceeds the visual and is rather an intersensorial occurrence, I seek to present how encounters with images stay with us in powerful ways and across many senses at once. As an intervention within the field of image theory and photography studies that builds upon the relatively recent turn away from prioritizing visuality and instead shifting towards multisensoriality – what we might also term as the ‘more-than visual’ – this piece proposes that if images exceed the visual and carry with them physical, haptic, sonic and affective qualities, then perhaps the afterimage is not something that we merely see but also what we can feel and hear and move-with. Perhaps the afterimage carries an intensity and an afterlife which lingers in our minds and can take hold of our entire body and our senses, composing and recomposing them over time. By pairing such inquiries alongside the narrative, literary and poetic works of Dionne Brand and Nathaniel Mackey – both of whom write of the intersensorial quality of photographs and afterimages with a particular kind of lively openness – I am hoping to intervene into the ongoing ‘more-than visual’ turn within the field of image theory by infusing it with a narrative-oriented synaesthetic vocabulary.
{"title":"Afterimages and the synaesthesia of photography","authors":"Kelann Currie-Williams","doi":"10.1386/pop_00050_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00050_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article takes as its focus the concept of the ‘afterimage’ and its relationship to memory, the synaesthetic experience of perception and the multisensory turn within the study of photographic images. Afterimages have consistently been described as phenomena of visual persistence where, optically, a recorded moment of the past leaks into the present and remains visible before us on our retinas. By recasting this originary understanding of an afterimage as simply a ghostly, optical occurrence and insisting that the phenomenon exceeds the visual and is rather an intersensorial occurrence, I seek to present how encounters with images stay with us in powerful ways and across many senses at once. As an intervention within the field of image theory and photography studies that builds upon the relatively recent turn away from prioritizing visuality and instead shifting towards multisensoriality – what we might also term as the ‘more-than visual’ – this piece proposes that if images exceed the visual and carry with them physical, haptic, sonic and affective qualities, then perhaps the afterimage is not something that we merely see but also what we can feel and hear and move-with. Perhaps the afterimage carries an intensity and an afterlife which lingers in our minds and can take hold of our entire body and our senses, composing and recomposing them over time. By pairing such inquiries alongside the narrative, literary and poetic works of Dionne Brand and Nathaniel Mackey – both of whom write of the intersensorial quality of photographs and afterimages with a particular kind of lively openness – I am hoping to intervene into the ongoing ‘more-than visual’ turn within the field of image theory by infusing it with a narrative-oriented synaesthetic vocabulary.","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41350867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article sets out to substantiate an understanding of the photographic image as a constellation of scaled relations, with a focus on the significance of historically neglected questions of scale in and for the present. It explores two recurrent themes in Walter Benjamin’s writings: his celebrated methodological-epistemological concept of constellation and his less often remarked fascination for relationships of scale, processes of scaling and the scale effects these produce. These are investigated in light of the mutable and composite character of the contemporary photographic image and its unprecedented scale as a mass form. Key phenomena and prevalent conceptions of photography are approached as already structured by intercalated facts, operations and experiences of scale, scaling and scalability. On this basis, a constellation of three historical essays that examine questions of scale in photography is constructed. The guiding aim of this construction is that such a constellation might stand as a pre-history of scale and its significance in and for photography today.
{"title":"Three scale models for a photographic world: Benjamin, constellation, image and scale","authors":"Andrew Fisher","doi":"10.1386/pop_00027_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00027_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article sets out to substantiate an understanding of the photographic image as a constellation of scaled relations, with a focus on the significance of historically neglected questions of scale in and for the present. It explores two recurrent themes in Walter Benjamin’s\u0000 writings: his celebrated methodological-epistemological concept of constellation and his less often remarked fascination for relationships of scale, processes of scaling and the scale effects these produce. These are investigated in light of the mutable and composite character of the contemporary\u0000 photographic image and its unprecedented scale as a mass form. Key phenomena and prevalent conceptions of photography are approached as already structured by intercalated facts, operations and experiences of scale, scaling and scalability. On this basis, a constellation of three historical\u0000 essays that examine questions of scale in photography is constructed. The guiding aim of this construction is that such a constellation might stand as a pre-history of scale and its significance in and for photography today.","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66749682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New facts emerge: An interview with Dave Beech","authors":"D. Beech, Alex Fletcher","doi":"10.1386/pop_00025_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00025_7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48670982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Review of: Documents of Doubt: The Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art, Heather Diack (2020)Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 296 pp.,ISBN 978-1-51790-757-0, p/bk, $30.00
{"title":"Documents of Doubt: The Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art, Heather Diack (2020)","authors":"Thomas Watson","doi":"10.1386/pop_00035_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00035_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Documents of Doubt: The Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art, Heather Diack (2020)Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 296 pp.,ISBN 978-1-51790-757-0, p/bk, $30.00","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49554551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Theory of the Image, Thomas Nail (2019)","authors":"Noa Levin","doi":"10.1386/pop_00033_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00033_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Theory of the Image, Thomas Nail (2019)New York: Oxford University, 432 pp.,ISBN 978-0-19005-008-5, p/bk, £19.99","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42552975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article suggests that when the engagement with photography is limited to questions of recognition and resemblance, such approach stifles our experience of the world and directs us towards monotonous homogeneity in which everything can be represented in a photograph, and a photograph is always a representation of something or other. And yet, a photograph has the potential to move our gaze beyond representation of events and situations in a way that allows us to penetrate the appearance of things and to sense their inner reality, rather than act as a mere illustration.
{"title":"The assassination of experience by photography","authors":"Danny Rubinstein","doi":"10.1386/POP_00031_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/POP_00031_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article suggests that when the engagement with photography is limited to questions of recognition and resemblance, such approach stifles our experience of the world and directs us towards monotonous homogeneity in which everything can be represented in a photograph, and a photograph\u0000 is always a representation of something or other. And yet, a photograph has the potential to move our gaze beyond representation of events and situations in a way that allows us to penetrate the appearance of things and to sense their inner reality, rather than act as a mere illustration.","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44614534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Photographs and optical images, whatever their contents, are imprints of the electromagnetic waves in the (human) visible range of wavelengths, we refer to as light. Furthermore, they are designed to portray different parts of the visible light in terms of different colours, in analogy with the human eyes, however imperfectly. The world outside our eyes and cameras, however, is permeated by electromagnetic waves with much wider spectrum of wavelengths than those in the visible range. Importantly also, colour is a construct of our eye‐brains: the Universe itself has no colour, independently of us. I ask how does the knowledge of these facts change the way we perceive the colour in optical images and photographs, whatever their relationship to the world in a representational sense may be? By employing three images, with very different origins and vistas ‐ one a direct photograph, the other two synthetically constructed images using real cosmological observations ‐ I demonstrate the extent to which colour in such images can hide the underlying phenomena of which they claim to visually speak, both due to its nature as a coarse-grained visual index, and by being restricted to the visible range. The aim is not to belittle the important role that our (restricted) vision together with our perception of colour have played in the evolution of our species, and still play in the way we relate to the world informationally, aesthetically and emotionally. But rather to show that recognizing the limitations of our vision and complementing it with the knowledge of the phenomena underlying optical images and photographs can allow us to perceive them anew and provide additional tools (both conceptual and visual) to imagine and envision such images outside the bounds of the visible range and colour.
{"title":"World without colour and its photographs and optical images","authors":"R. Tavakol","doi":"10.1386/pop_00029_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00029_1","url":null,"abstract":"Photographs and optical images, whatever their contents, are imprints of the electromagnetic waves in the (human) visible range of wavelengths, we refer to as light. Furthermore, they are designed to portray different parts of the visible light in terms of different colours, in analogy\u0000 with the human eyes, however imperfectly. The world outside our eyes and cameras, however, is permeated by electromagnetic waves with much wider spectrum of wavelengths than those in the visible range. Importantly also, colour is a construct of our eye‐brains: the Universe itself has\u0000 no colour, independently of us. I ask how does the knowledge of these facts change the way we perceive the colour in optical images and photographs, whatever their relationship to the world in a representational sense may be? By employing three images, with very different origins and vistas\u0000 ‐ one a direct photograph, the other two synthetically constructed images using real cosmological observations ‐ I demonstrate the extent to which colour in such images can hide the underlying phenomena of which they claim to visually speak, both due to its nature as a coarse-grained\u0000 visual index, and by being restricted to the visible range. The aim is not to belittle the important role that our (restricted) vision together with our perception of colour have played in the evolution of our species, and still play in the way we relate to the world informationally, aesthetically\u0000 and emotionally. But rather to show that recognizing the limitations of our vision and complementing it with the knowledge of the phenomena underlying optical images and photographs can allow us to perceive them anew and provide additional tools (both conceptual and visual) to imagine and\u0000 envision such images outside the bounds of the visible range and colour.","PeriodicalId":40690,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of Photography","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42219460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}