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Фридрих ТИТЬЕН / Friedrich TIETJEN | Мария ГУРЬЕВА / Maria GOURIEVA
| «После (пост)фотографии». Предварительные замечания / After Post-Photography. An Introduction |
Фридрих ТИТЬЕН / Friedrich TIETJEN
Независимый исследователь и куратор Центра культуры и искусств Reinbeckhallen, Берлин, Германия
PhD по истории искусств
Independent Researcher and Curator at the Reinbeckhallen, Berlin, Germany PhD in Art History [email protected]
Мария ГУРЬЕВА / Maria GOURIEVA
Европейский университет в Санкт-Петербурге, Россия Доцент факультета истории искусств Санкт-Петербургский государственный институт культуры, Санкт-Петербург, Россия
Доцент факультета искусств Кандидат философских наук
European University in St. Petersburg, Russia Assistant Professor, Department of Art History St. Petersburg State Institute for Culture, St. Petersburg, Russia Assistant Professor, Department of Art PhD in Philosophy [email protected]
«ПОСЛЕ (ПОСТ)ФОТОГРАФИИ». ПРЕДВАРИТЕЛЬНЫЕ ЗАМЕЧАНИЯ
В конце ХХ века, с распространением компьютерных и информационных технологий, одной из важнейших проблем «постфотографического» дискурса стала тема фотографической «достоверности», «правдивости». Хотя эта проблема обсуждалась и раньше, осмысление новых технологий заставило снова обратить внимание на неопределённость связи между фотографией и той реальностью, которую, как казалось, она должна была отображать. Это - пример того, как развивается «постфотографический» дискурс: новые опыты визуальной и социальной реальности, создаваемые и переживаемые посредством новых технологий, требуют теоретической «рамки» и методологического инструментария. В то же самое время, поиск адекватных теоретических моделей для изучения этих феноменов приводит к необходимости пересмотра истории фотографии и её осмысления. Развитие междисциплинарного поля исследований фотографии и пересмотр истории медиума - столь же важная составляющая феномена «постфотографии», сколь и сама специфика существования фотографии в ситуации, когда цифровые и информационные технологии играют важную часть в современной культуре. Данная статья характеризует
современное состояние исследований фотографии, представляя сборник работ, которые в некотором смысле характеризуют разнообразие материала и методологических подходов в этой области исследования.
Ключевые слова: постфотография, теория фотографии, цифровая фотография, исследования фотографии.
AFTER POST-PHOTOGRAPHY. AN INTRODUCTION
In the late XX century with the arrival of computer and information technologies, one of the main and earlier points of the debates around digital opportunities and futures for photography was the point of photographic "veracity", or "truthfulness", or "credibility": the new technologies seemed to have uncovered the dubious nature of photography's connection with reality that it had long been expected to depict. This topic is an example of how the "postphotographic" discourse developed: the new visual and social realities, brought about by the fast spreading of new technologies, required a theoretical framework and "toolbox". At the same time, the search for ade-
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| 4 (37) 2019 |
Фридрих ТИТЬЕН / Friedrich TIETJEN | Мария ГУРЬЕВА / Maria GOURIEVA
| «После (пост)фотографии». Предварительные замечания / After Post-Photography. An Introduction |
quate theoretical models to approach these new phenomena made clear the need to re-address the history of photography and its theoretical research. This development of photography studies and revision of its historical material is, as this article suggests, as much part of the "post-photography" as is the current state of photography itself, with the digital and information
technologies playing a major role in contemporary culture. The article introduces the collection of essays that shows a variety of material and methodology in the field of photography studies.
Key words: post-photography, theory of photography, digital photography, photography studies.
The debate about the "postphotographic" emerged in the late 20th century as researchers sought for ways to conceptualize the changes brought about by the advent of digital technologies in visual culture, and specifically in photography. Digital technologies offered, for instance, cameras that needed no film and made it possible to see the images right after they were made, as well as program software to edit and correct photographs, the possibility to store many images in a small physical space. This happened at the same time as the development of the Internet, and very soon the dissemination of digital cameras, digital archives, and social media introduced newly modified methods of conceiving, editing, disseminating, accumulating and storing photographic images. Changes were also visible in the dynamics of the social practices of dealing with photographs; more and more individuals were equipped with easy-to-use cameras integrated into their cell phones, enjoying the possibility of making them public easily and immediately.
Authors such as William J.T. Mitchell, Lev Manovich, Geoffrey Batchen, Fred Ritchin, Martha Rosler, and others1 were involved in
1 For a closer look at the debate of the last decade of XX century see, for example: William J.T.Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the PostPhotographic Era (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992); Fred Ritchin, In Our Own Image, the Coming Revolution in Photography (New York: Aperture,
debates, the purpose of which was to define the specifics of the ongoing changes and to formulate the central theoretical questions to which this new situation gave rise. Some of the immediate theoretical responses to the situation were to compare, and in many cases, juxtapose analog photography with digital, not only in terms of technology, but also with regard to their ontology and epistemology. For instance, one of the central
problems in the discussions of the post- _
photographic was the loss of "photographic truth" or rather, of the link between the image and reality it was supposed to represent.
Prior to the advent of digital photography, the relation between photography and reality (or truth, veracity or any other iteration of the same) was defined by two basic principles: the indexicality and the posteriority of the photographic image, i.e., whatever it depicts, it is gone, but it was there. These two principles were guaranteed by the premise that photography, at least in theory, was a mechanical medium. Other
1990); Martha Rosler, Image Simulations, Computer Manipulations, Some Considerations in A. Cameron (ed.), Digital Dialogues: an introduction, Ten. 8, Vol.2/2, Autumn (1991). For an overview of later discussions see: T. Bartscherer, R. Coover (eds), Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); John Hartley, Digital Futures for Cultural and Media Studies (Chichester: John Wiley, 2012).
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Фридрих ТИТЬЕН / Friedrich TIETJEN | Мария ГУРЬЕВА / Maria GOURIEVA
| «После (пост)фотографии». Предварительные замечания / After Post-Photography. An Introduction |
than the use of manual media, the human hand did not interfere with the creation of the image. By means of the light they reflected or emanated, objects would imprint themselves into emulsions. With digitalization however, the photographic image was in danger of becoming a subject of manual interference, of manipulation, of photo shopping. With this, the whole idea of photography as a medium of truth started faltering, and a post-photographic age with dubitative imagery seemed to dawn. As William J. T. Mitchell pointed out in the early 1990's, "Today, as we enter the post-photographic era, we must face once again the ineradicable fragility of our ontological distinctions between the imaginary and the real, and the tragic elusiveness of the Cartesian dream. We have indeed learned to fix shadows, but not to secure their meanings or to stabilize their truth values.. ,"2
This had a serious impact on discussions about the theory of photography in the 1990s and later, It also fundamentally influenced avant-garde art photography. Moreover, photography became a medium or a tool that is virtually omnipresent, and, particularly with advent of the smartphone, surveillance cameras and more recently, drones, pervaded everyday life in ways previously unthinkable. Where once there had been a seemingly clear distinction between photography and other visual media, a plethora of hybrid, augmented, and para-photographic imagery mushroomed, exemplified by computer tomography, 3D virtual reality video games, HiRes-renderings, automated face recognition systems, deep fakes and Instagram face filters.
2 William J. T. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992), p. 255
Despite all these newfangled innovations and applications, though, what photography had been before did not vanish - quite the opposite. After all, one still needs a portrait photograph for a passport, and vigilant customs officers will, in any case, check whether there is sufficient likeness between the bearer of the travel document and the portrait within. Advertisement photographs still show how much life will improve if only you would buy this car or that chocolate bar. The pictures posted on social networks still show what a great time you have, just as in the old family albums. And those photographs that can be seen on online news programs don't differ greatly from those that can be seen in print.
These seemingly paradoxical diagnostics have some interesting consequences. With digital capability, photography changed fundamentally, _ and at the same time, it didn't change at all. Not only post-photographic imagery was affected. Instead, it turned out that both the indexicality and posteriority of the photographic image were slightly dubious categories, even when applied to chemical photography. Some of the arguments are obvious and banal. There are only a few wildly varying processes such as daguerreotypes, polaroids, photograms &c, that can be assumed to be indexical in the broader sense of Peirce's definition, and only if factors such as lenses, shutter speeds and differences in chemical emulsions are conveniently ignored. For the majority of negative and print based processes, indexicality appears an even more lop-sided definition, and any physical connection between the picture and what it pictures is severed anyway. The same applies to the posteriority of the photographic image, the Barthesian ça a été: the temporality of a photographic portrait, for
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Фридрих ТИТЬЕН / Friedrich TIETJEN | Мария ГУРЬЕВА / Maria GOURIEVA
| «После (пост)фотографии». Предварительные замечания / After Post-Photography. An Introduction |
instance, is far more complex than just being an image of the past. Indeed, certain applications, such as advertisement photography, are rather projections onto how bright the future will look after the purchase of the commodity in question.
The debates of these and similar questions also were part of a fundamental shift in how to define photography. For most of its history, these definitions had been based on applied technology. Photography was understood as an apparatus-based medium, that is on the application of chemistry and physics mixed with a certain amount of engineering involving optics and photo-sensitive emulsions at its core. While this definition was already leaky insofar as it didn't address processes such as the autotype, it become virtually useless with the multitude of digital applications. Under these conditions, definitions started moving to the other end of the photographic process. Instead of the means by which a photograph was produced, its perception gained importance, Often, the process of image generation was impossible to discern from only looking at an image. From this perspective, photographs are those images treated as photographs, i.e., those being looked at and processed as if the qualifications usually connected with photography were applied. Under these conditions, photography becomes a mode of looking and perceiving.
Discussions spurred by the postphotographic situation brought to light the questions that had been posed earlier at different stages of the history of photography. These include not only the questions of "photographic truth" and its manipulation, or the juxtaposition of newer and earlier technologies of generating images, but also the question of how the history of photography itself is told. The critique and
deconstruction of mainstream histories of photography that started at the end of the 20th century stimulated a search for alternative views of the history of the medium.3 At the same time, the revision of historical material became equipped with a range of research methodologies provided by the interdisciplinary field that came to be identified as "photography studies."4
Post-photography, therefore, can be understood, on the one hand, as the current situation in which photography exists within contemporary culture that is defined by the prevalence of the digital and information. On the other hand, the post-photographic is the theoretical discourse that conceptualizes this current situation for photography. Furthermore, the post-photographic situation is characterized by a toolbox of methodologies that have been g collected within photography studies and are _ applied in the analysis of the current situation to address and rearticulate the history and historiography of photography.
3 An example of a model that we find sustainable is „a history of photography as a history of writing" (and not just of art or technology), that follows from John Tagg's argument that "history of photography stands in relation to the history of Art as a history of writing would to the history of Literature". See: John Tagg, The Burden of Representation. Essays on Histories and Photographies (New-York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), p. 15.
4 Further to the critique of historiographies of photography, see: Peter Blank, Which History of Photography: The Modernist Model, in Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Winter 1994), pp. 19-21; Ya'ara Gil Glazer, A new kind of history? The challenges of contemporary histories of photography, in Journal of Art Historiography No.3 (December 2010), URL: https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/ media_183179_en.pdf; Douglas R. Nickel, History of Photography: the State of Research, in The Art Bulletin, 83: 3 (Sept. 2001), pp. 548-558.
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Фридрих ТИТЬЕН / Friedrich TIETJEN | Мария ГУРЬЕВА / Maria GOURIEVA
| «После (пост)фотографии». Предварительные замечания / After Post-Photography. An Introduction |
Some years ago, such discussions triggered the organization of the first After Post-Photography conference, which, since then, has become an international event taking place each year in early summer at the European University in St Petersburg. More than 100 lectures and presentations have been presented within its framework, covering an incredibly broad spectrum of topics in the history and theory of photography. The lectures dealt with questions of photographic theory and of photographic optics, of the use of photography in politics and in private life, of studio production and archive practices, of pre-photographic processes and of what photography might become in a couple of years. If they had anything in common, it was their polite skepticism in assuming that there could be something like general and all encompassing definitions of photography.5
This volume of the International Journal of Cultural Research brings together some of the conference speakers as well as authors who have not participated yet. While this issue can hardly be seen as a fair representation of the conference's work, it may give an impression of the multitude of subjects, methods and styles of thinking that can be found there.
References
1. T. Bartscherer, R. Coover (eds), Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
2. Sean Cubitt, Digital Aesthetics (London: Sage, 1998).
3. Geoffrey Batchen, Photogenics, in History of Photography, Vol.22/No.1, Spring (London: Tay-lor&Francis, 1998).
4. Peter Blank, Which History of Photography: The Modernist Model, in Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Winter 1994), pp. 19-21.
5. Ya'ara Gil Glazer, A new kind of history? The challenges of contemporary histories of photography, in Journal of Art Historiography No.3 (December 2010), https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2011/ 02/media_183179_en.pdf
6. John Hartley, Digital Futures for Cultural and Media Studies (Chichester: John Wiley, 2012).
7. Sarah Kember, Visual Anxiety, Photography, New Technologies and Subjectivity (Manchester University Press, 1998).
8. Martin Lister (ed.) The Photographic Image in Digital Culture (London: Routledge, 1995).
9. Lev Manovich, The Paradoxes of Digital Photography in Hubertus v. Amelunxen et al. (eds.), Photography After Photography (G+B Arts, 1996).
10. William J. T. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992).
11. Douglas R. Nickel, History of Photography: the State of Research, in The Art Bulletin, 83: 3 (Sept. 2001), pp. 548-558.
12. Fred Ritchin, In Our Own Image, the Coming Revolution in Photography (New York: Aperture, 1990).
13. Martha Rosler, Image Simulations, Computer Manipulations, Some Considerations in A.Cameron (ed.), Digital Dialogues: an introduction, Ten.8, Vol.2/2, Autumn (1991).
14. John Tagg, The Burden of Representation. Essays on Histories and Photographies (New-York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988).
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5 For the program of the former conferences, please see http://after-post.photography/en/
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