Investigating Photography

by Jan Troost

Photography has been analyzed in various ways in the past. We believe a philosophical approach pioneered by Wittgenstein can considerably clarify the debate on the essence of photography. In this essay, we will investigate photography, and will contrast a Wittgensteinian reading of photography with important other approaches in the literature.

Photography has been approached through means of classification. Various types of photography have been distinguished, like landscape photography, portrait photography, documentary photography, etc. The approach makes clear that the word photography refers to photographs that appear in various places, like museums, magazines, newspapers, on television, and so on. Clearly, the meaning of photographs depends on the context in which they are used.

Nevertheless, authors have tried to distill an essence of photography, independent of the context to which it refers. How should we approach this problem of defining an essence of photography, if it is at all a legitimate problem ?

Consider photography to refer to photographs. We wish to study what is generally refered to as photographs. What is outside the scope of this text is to take words used in daily language, and to instill a particular meaning in those particular words that we borrow from daily language. We do not undertake that philosophical enterprise, but rather take a modest approach, first analyzing what we can learn from a sensible analysis of daily use of language.

We argue that photographs are images, which portray an average of light intensities captured by a camera during a short period of time. We do not mean this description to be exact, nor do we take it to be a first step towards an exact definition. It is merely a description of photographs which would approximately coincide with a layman's understanding of what photographs are. Indeed, if we would ask many people to collect photographs, then we would find that the above description fits fairly well with the collection of images so collected. There might be pictures that do not fit the description (-- one could find some photographs that are not averages over short period of time, but rather over a long period of time, but probably few of them --), and one could most likely think of photographs or other images of a different type than the ones collected which would fit the above description, but which happened not to be collected.

We could add or subtract from the above definition. We could drop the condition of being captured by a camera (for instance allowing for a direct imprint of sunlight on photographic paper). We could add the condition that the picture has to be taken in a period of time that has to be between a millionth of a second and fifteen days. Or we could demand that less than 50% of the surface of the image can be obtained by other than photographic means. All of the above changes would be as problematic or as non-problematic as the philosopher chooses them to be. Our point is that our definition is a working description, neither meant to be exact, nor meant as a first step towards an operational definition. Our definition is an indication of what photography is. And by daily standards, it is a good indication.

We have given a technical indication of what photography is. We wish to analyze whether it has or produces further meaning. To that end, we consider the uses of photography that we come across often. Where do we come across collections of photographs ? We encounter photographs in family albums, in newspapers, in magazines, in touristic brochures, on billboards, on our passports, in illustrated texts, in museums, in books. Clearly, the use of photography is diverse. In fact, the use of photography is so diverse, that one might expect it to be difficult to find a common denominator (-- an essence of meaning --) in the different uses that we make of photography.

When we wish to analyze an essence of meaning in photography as a whole, it therefore rapidly defies classification, as Barthes argues. The simple reason for that is that different classes will contain photography used in highly different contexts, producing an entirely different meaning. When Barthes distills an essence of photography that is an "It was.", "It has been.", "It was there, then.", we see that his wanderings have brought him fairly close to the above technical description of photography. "It was then, there." we take to mean that we have an image which is an average of a light intensity emanating from or reflecting off some given object or background, during a small period of time. That allows us to say when the photography was taken (approximately), and of what referent (namely the one which produces an average light intensity matching that which was recorded through a rather technical process). One can debate how uniquely the photograph fixes time, place and object (investigating how unique one can date a negative, a print, how easily one can make a decor matching a given place, or how unique the average light intensity of a given object is), however, that would miss the point already made above. When Barthes quotes his rather vague essence of photography, he is fairly close to describing in very general terms what we experience as photographs. We could take his final conclusion to be a rephrasing of the technical indication we have given about what photography is. Therefore, through the booklet he writes, he comes very close to a Wittgensteinian interpretation of photography, though he arrives at his point in a roundabout fashion, and without refering to Wittgenstein's approach.

Barthes' work therefore confirms a Wittgensteinian approach to a definition of photography. It is to our mind not surprising that a postmodern, deconstructive approach to photography, as practiced by Barthes should come close, in rather vague terms, to the simplest of definitions of photography, based on daily usage. After all, having filtered scholarly classifications through deconstruction, in a field not thoroughly developed, one often finds the wisdom in common language. Barthes' analysis illustrates, in its attempt to remain meaningful, that deconstruction can come close to Wittgenstein's realism.

Other authors have argued for an essence of photography, regardless of its use, and have created a web of contradictory stereotypes that have sourced a confused literature on the photographic art. Sontag has commented interestingly on various uses of photography, but has sometimes neglected to delineate which of her comments apply to which usage of photography. She thereby inadvertently created unnecessary misconceptions as for instance that the photographic art would not require technical mastery. A comment like that might originate, for instance, in mistakingly trying to identify an essence common to journalistic and artistic photography.

Walter Benjamin has identified intriguing and important properties of early photography, as the longer posing times, and the fear to lose ones spirit to the camera. In later times, these insightful comments on particular aspects of early photography have gained a defining role that they clearly do not deserve. Who would argue these days that the small digital camera steals the soul of Notre Dame ? Who still recognizes the skilful use of longer posing times to avoid the Hollywoodian smile that most of us have learned to copy from television ? The use of photography has largely surpassed these early analyses of Benjamin's. Taking them too seriously is more typical of the academic's sometimes exaggerated need to see the accumulation of knowledge, than of the present day photographic enterprise, that has long redefined itself, independent of observers.

Rather, following Benjamin, one might wish to analyze the change in art brought about by photography. Mass reproduction of artworks, made feasible by advanced printing techniques, and in the present day even more so by the publication of photographs of artworks in databases accesible to multitudes, must certainly have influenced the artistic enterprise. Should we accept, for instance, that photography has made it even more necessary for the artist to be strongly original in her imagery, then we could distill an essence of (artistic reproduction in) photography. Indeed, an essence of photography would then become its influence on artistic originality. And what a strong essence that would be for only a particular usage of the medium. Particular essays of Sontag, too, analyse some of these particular workings of photography.

Sontag also rightly remarks that photography is a medium. As a medium, it has disctinctive properties. Up til now, we have concentrated on photography as defined through photographs, and their usage. We have neglected other distinctive properties of the medium, as for instance the conservation of a negative or digital original (or copie) of a photograph. (We do not wish to enter here into the futile debate on originals and copies, giving no priority to one or to the other, feeling no such urge to accord awards of primariness amongst, for digital copies, for all practical purposes, identical specimen.) That distinctive property makes photography ideally suited for mass reproduction. That feature has then become defining for photography in the measure in which the economical use of a medium defines its most common practice.

(to be continued)

"Investigating Photography ", Jan Troost, 16-08-2005, 25-03-2006.

Copyright 2005/6, by Jan Troost