CC BY
20UDC 77.04+70.1+130.2
Eva Dëdeckovâ
Photography and its cosmological depth against the grotesque "authenticity"
Formerly, photography was firmly connected with memory. It was a true witness of life. Drawing with light, it was drawing with light of personality and world itself on light-sensitive surface — it was really meant to be a part of a mystery of photons. Exactly those photons which bring us the "actual" picture of the Sun in the sky whereby we actually see a true eight minutes history or billion years old light from stars in the night sky. That's the literally universal core of the photography. Being sensitive to light means having a deep sense of the Symbol of the Universe. This ability enpowers us to know what it means to capture this moment for eternity. Even the colorizing of the old black and white photos brings us closer to the phenomenon of closeness, makes the connection between the picture and us believable, i.e. belief is able here since we believe in reality of people, things and past world shown in the picture. The captured emotions and mood we are staring at, they are manifesting to us this hopeless human fight against the Time and against finiteness by this piece of (also ephemeral) "infinity" which says — we are here, we are alive. Or at least — we were, too.
Contemporary obsession with stylised photographs is a sign of the ontological need for illusion. The illusion of perfection, of authenticity in living. It is about copying the pattern of understanding the photography as a powerful tool that decides what will become one day "the true history" telling the "exciting story" of our life. Although it wasn't so exciting and shiny at all. We need to get hope at least that we mean something to this world. However, the massification of photography trivializes its original meaning. The meaning is shifted from capturing to censoring the truth about our own life that is surely imperfect.
The native people were afraid of photography because they believed that it would steal their souls. But today, in pursuit of taking a shot of every dull moment of everydayness, we are actually stealing and destroying the real soul of the Time as such. In addition, it seems that our own "inner mental policy" acts toward ourselves like some totalitarian regime — by using a "political retouche", a photo manipulation just as the effective self-censorship to keep the nihilistic reality, emptiness and inner unrest well hidden.
Well, there were also times when really strange styles of photography were popular, such as the Victorian post-mortem photography. But it was all about the authentic relationship to death, to the Time as such — it was an attempt to sharpen the grief, to keep the dearly departed loved ones before eyes so the mourning was almost tangible. Here is still the cosmological depth of photography alive because the Piety which belongs to the Night of Being [1, p. 199] comes in touch with Light of Being through photo as medium and this way one can still feel the most original relationship to the World (Universe).
Contemporary mass trend of stylised photography images when everyone's picture looks like a prototype of successful way of life is just a fragment of our broken metaphysical "World Picture". We are going much further — the plastic surgeries become more common. Our neurosis from groundlessness pushes us not only to change the clusters of pixels, but also the atomic composition of our own physical existence. Would some kind of conceptual art help us here? Or a good sense of humor? Well, that would have to be a really good dark one...
However, the addiction of images (this strong subconscious ontological relation to symbols) in confrontation with limitless technological possibilities brings us to the question: is it still possible to believe anything at all? What is the Truth? — There is no Truth, says Nietzsche mercilessly [2]. Is this a call to critical thinking? Do we have any philosophy of education that would learn one to fly above the abyss without fear at all? Or to bring one to critical thinking at least? Can we really keep the original universal language of photography alive only by thinking?
There was a time when photography was a true witness and its truth was guaranteed by chemical-technological process. Performed manipulations could be revealed only on photographic negatives. The principle of negatives has nowadays become the photography itself — the reality must be cleaned of disturbing and "unpretty" details and only then it will become "real". The great persuasion tool is also a way of creating of so-called "stories" which places into images dyna-mis, a movement, a persuassive power. — Let's see, we've got here censorship, propaganda, cult of personality and where are we heading to? To the trials, herd-people's courts and sentences to death? — Yes, all this kind of motives we can already see in the virtual space...
Who is the so-called "influencer"? Just a living delusive billboard caught by large companies to propagate their products, services and so on, formerly vulgarly (and truly) known as hanger-on and collaborator. With what regime? Of course the capitalist regime. Isn't it all about visual agitation of consumers? By means of idolatry of "followers"? What does this all mean? Are these signs of some kind of totalitarian mental state of modern human existence...? It is a reference to general internal decay of the values, the role models, the life orientation. But this doesn't have to be seen as something negative at all. Anyway, it is not enough to be free from the old metaphysical frames (we haven't even knowingly get to this point yet), but rather it is necessary to know the freedom to the art of very own self-creation. But we don't know it, we've got no education of this kind. That's what Nietzsche is talking about in his Zarathustra when he lays out the three metamorphoses of the spirit. The thing is (and that's the reason why
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Zarathustra searches for disciples, for free spirits) that we still don't have an accurate education that could let us perceive and literally incorporate, embody (sich einverleiben) the only "truth" of Being — that it is an eternal cosmic happening with no special meaning for us. Nihilism should not be a curse; it is an opportunity to lose those human, all too human alibis in living and thinking. There is no God, no authority, and even no technology that could save us from our own freedom and responsibility for the form of life. Who wants to sleep, sleeps well on, says Zarathustra... But even if the Gods are gone and we don't believe in immortal soul anymore, there is still the World (Koopog) all around us — therefore our fellowship is always still possible. Because there is still Koopog, we cannot ever stop to relate ourselves to the Time, to the Death and to the Life itself. [1, p. 114-115]
We see that Nietzsche's philosophy, fire of which brought us Eugen Fink with his cosmological philosophy of education back, enables us to think critically and calls us also to feel and to live the problems physically. But what has it got to do with
problem of photography? The true fine-art photography brings the true overlap to what is important, to that unspeakable. In a certain sense it is an existential testimony — this is what keeps fine-art photography in touch with philosophy and poetry. Yet, it is somehow stronger. In the first place, the great photographers were always great observers of the life. They don't complicate the universal language with words. What a pity for us, philosophers, that we want to evaluate in addition. At least we can find the lasting emotional charge for our thinking in a photographic memory.
Bibliography
1. Fink, E. Existenz und Coexistenz: Grundprobleme der menschlichen Gemeinschaft. Würzburg: Königshausen u. Neumann, 1987. 238 S.
2. Nietzsche, F. Nietzsche Source — Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke und Briefe. URL: http://www. nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-i885,34[23o] (accessed October 10, 2020).
