Bob Walkden wrote: >Authenticity does not depend on the medium but on the source of the >information, and the extent to which we trust the source. If the >National >Enquirer printed a photograph and claimed it was a Yeti, I'd >be inclined >to doubt it. However, if Nature printed the same >photograph and said it >was a Yeti I'd have very good reason to believe >it to be true.
A photograph and a painting, both of unknown origin and not accompanied by any documentation or verbage will be viewed and interpreted very differently. Correctly or not, one will be believed by most viewers to possess a different level of truth value, a different relationship to reality. This is precisely the attraction of photography � the not merely formal qualities. I do not disagree that the trust one has in the source is tremendously important in connecting the sign of the photo with the signified. This is where information external to the photo enters in (increasingly so in the digital age). But the sign itself in photography possesses very different values than the sign of the painting and this is where the importance of the medium, and not just of intentionality, enters in. In the example above, if it is a photograph, it is of something - maybe a man in a Yeti suit. As far as the photograph is concerned, it is an accurate representation of a man in a Yeti suit (or whatever it was - maybe a bush in the shape of a Yeti, or a smudge on the lens in the shape of a Yeti) in the given conditions (broadly defined). Whether this is a "real" Yeti is a different question, one external to the concerns of photography itself (though no less important of course). >The vast, overwhelming majority of paintings, in the West, were > >representational until the rise of photography. Those paintings still > >are representational. It doesn't mean they're all honest, or that they > >all depict events that really happened. But this is the definition of literal representation, which is what I am referring to. Yes, traditional painting has been figuratively reprentational � and your point is taken, although now it is of course known that all painting is abstract, if not always self-consciously so. I should have been more clear in my terminology. (This is precisely the value of give and take, or dialogue.) The difference in these modes of "representing" consists of course in the relationship to the real. >Different media, none of which is intrinsically more or less honest >than >any other, but trustworthy authors and/or context. That's what >makes the >difference. I agree that the trust in author is essential. However, there are intrinsic differences between mediums. One has to consciously subvert representation in photography (and even then, one only succeeds in subverting the recognizability of representation but not representation itself) whereas canvass and buckets of paint for example are anonymous and not predisposed to being assembled in a figurative manner, an abstract manner, an accidental spill, etc. These differences are hard to quantify, but they exist; they have to do with our cultural history, the history of each idiom, the psychological associations we have with phenomenon, the processes of creation and our knowledge of the processes of creation (e.g., optical and other physical laws), the human physiology, and many, many more things. Thanks for the debate - I find what you are saying to be of interest. RSW _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
