My thinking on images is continually buffeted around by new ideas. I'm reading Cassirer's Philosophy Of Symbolic Forms (vol 1, Language) and am enjoying it. So far it affirms my own epistemological beliefs, that knowledge of the world is mediated, meaning is not fixed, and that we deal mostly (entirely?) with fictions. I'm not sure yet if Cassirer is as sceptical as me, I hope to find out. It's interesting though how Cassirer posits language as one of several independent modes of symbolic formation - language, art, myth, science/reason and religion each function through their own cultural forms and the meanings attributed to them, unlike the Saussurians who would place language as the most basic means by which all the different cultural forms function. As I am reading Cassirer it is easy to imagine that photography possesses the dignity of a fully qualified category of epistemology, because the aesthetic imagination is treated as essential to our basic experiencing of the world. Although Cassirer was against Heidegger ('being' as the basic ground of philosophy is constantly rejected), I am reminded of when I read 'The Origin of the Work of Art' because of the same sense of the fundamental importance of representation, of an image inserting itself between us and the world. However, Cassirer rejects the concept of representation too, because for him there is no guaranteed already-existing external world for us to make copies of. It is us that forms the criteria, categories, of perception in an ever constant process of relations between that which we have already formed as symbols and the world that comes to us through them.
I took from Heidegger's "Origin.." that the work of art "worlds", but for me a material presence was implied here, and "representation" was only part, and not an essential part, of the work. In photography, it was always my sense that there is no surface. But I know at least one person who has taken trouble over this and would disagree, though I have not understood why. (It's very difficult!)
ReplyDeleteI can dimly see how Cassirer could have contested Heidegger here and wonder if there would be anything to learn from their exchange at Davos.
Hi there.
ReplyDeleteI admit I'm no expert on these things, so won't take it too much further. I haven't read Origin for a long time and am going on the memory I have of a kind of revelation of the almost physical/material activity of representation as Heidegger presents it, though he may have been criticising the position.
What do you mean by 'no surface'? No surface to the material object of the photograph or something else?
The surface I say is lacking in photography is what I find present in painting and makes them different.
ReplyDeleteWhether one is painting or looking at a painting, the hand, and so the body, are implied whether there is representation or not. Touch is somehow necessary for this communication and with it, surface.
I'd say painting is more like seeing than photography, and Hockney's work (for example) explores this difference. But then who said painting has to be like seeing?
I see that other types of visual art imagery, and photography is one, is non-retinal in Duchamp's sense. The John Stezaker show at Whitechapel last year made me feel nauseous. The doctored images make no attempt to seduce the eye but go straight in to understanding, meaning, Kantian schema. Maybe that's where my friend locates photgraphy's surface.
Yes, I understand what you mean now about surface, and I guess this is a lot of what produces photography's apparent realism and readiness to be an 'epistemological category'. I think of category as bordered by the other categories - there is a division between the categories (as referenced by the title of this blog) and categories are relational to each other. This is a kind of framing, I think, and it's the framing that links photography with categorisation for me.
ReplyDeleteWhat you seem to be suggesting is that the aesthetic takes its pleasure from is sensuality and if something is overly rational then we lose the pleasure of the art...? That's a well acknowledged position... and I'm too rusty on Kant to remember the precise difference between aesthetic pleasure and rational pleasure - the pleasure of employing the imagination and understanding - the role of the imagination to cognition... etc. (Ha - big gloss there). But I can see a whole series of oppositions opening up here from our little discussion:
photography/painting
category/representation
universal subjectivity/individuality-expression
reason/sense
intellectual/haptic
Something more for me to think about...
Understood! Gee! I'm hoping it was the Stezaker reference.
ReplyDeleteI like it - your suggestion of a category boundary. It offers me a new way to reflect on a failure. Thank you!
I'm curious about Heidegger's interpretation of Kant.