Caveat viewor
Sep. 15th, 2005 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHere are eight pictures from the current batch of snaps downloaded from my Sony Cybershot M1, representing the last seven days of my life in Berlin. You see, in order, a local Friedrichshain graphic design practice making fun of election candidates, a mille feuille of Photoshop windows opened accidentally, a flower in a hothouse at the Botanischer Garten, a display case at the Plant Museum nearby, some squat art featuring Marlene Dietrich's cheekbones and a pile of skulls (a caustic comment on the relation between spectacle and holocaust, perhaps?), a Mitte art opening seen through tall grasses, the Laptop Orchestra performing a Tomomi Adachi piece in clear plastic tents, and the forest at Schloss Lanke, where I played a concert on Sunday.
When you look at my photos, you stand (or sit, squat, or lie) in my place, and look through my eyes at what I see, don't you? Well, not exactly. Caveat viewor — may the viewer beware!
"Just as illusionism of Renaissance linear perspective performed the ideological function of 'positioning the subject', so too did the photographic image. 'The installation of the viewer as subject depends upon reserving a singular place for him or her, the reciprocal in front of the image of the vanishing point "behind" it, the point of origin from which the camera "took" its view and where we now take ours'. French theorists associated with the journals Tel Quel and Cinéthique argued that since the code of linear perspective is built into the camera, photography and film which, whilst appearing to involve simply a neutral recording of reality, serve to reinforce 'a bourgeois ideology which makes the individual subject the focus and origin of meaning'."
If you want seven thousand words more of this—and I know you do—read Semiotics for Beginners, an online text by Daniel Chandler of the University of Aberystwyth. Cracking stuff.
When you look at my photos, you stand (or sit, squat, or lie) in my place, and look through my eyes at what I see, don't you? Well, not exactly. Caveat viewor — may the viewer beware!
"Just as illusionism of Renaissance linear perspective performed the ideological function of 'positioning the subject', so too did the photographic image. 'The installation of the viewer as subject depends upon reserving a singular place for him or her, the reciprocal in front of the image of the vanishing point "behind" it, the point of origin from which the camera "took" its view and where we now take ours'. French theorists associated with the journals Tel Quel and Cinéthique argued that since the code of linear perspective is built into the camera, photography and film which, whilst appearing to involve simply a neutral recording of reality, serve to reinforce 'a bourgeois ideology which makes the individual subject the focus and origin of meaning'."
If you want seven thousand words more of this—and I know you do—read Semiotics for Beginners, an online text by Daniel Chandler of the University of Aberystwyth. Cracking stuff.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 08:45 am (UTC)Delaware?
Date: 2005-09-15 09:14 am (UTC)Re: Delaware?
Date: 2005-09-15 09:26 am (UTC)http://www.delaware.gr.jp/
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 09:27 am (UTC)It's the Laptop Orchestra performing at Tacheles, which is one of Mitte's oldest and most venerable squat-art venues.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 09:42 am (UTC)(Off to look for Laptop Orchestra mp3's).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 09:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 04:37 pm (UTC)purty pichures!
Date: 2005-09-15 10:57 am (UTC)But really isnt the "non-reality" and subjectivity something that even children understand at this point? I'm sure this was a Thinking Fellers Heavy Topic when photography was all shiny and new, but anyways...
Why is it when I read the word "bourgeois" I start giggling? Is that word only real to europeans?
Why cant academics give us PDF versions of long texts?
Chris_B
Re: purty pichures!
Date: 2005-09-15 11:56 am (UTC)"I mean, if it were a fake, why would any photoshopping even be necessary? It's not like we can even tell that it's Bush without being told so by a reporter."
I think he's right, and I think two things emerge from that:
1. The thing that establishes the veracity of an image is not the image itself, or even the words that put it in context, but our relationship of trust with the person speaking those words.
2. The fact that an image has been Photoshopped can, in some circumstances, be a sign of its trustworthiness rather than the reverse. Photoshop can clarify as well as falsify, but if you're really intent on falsifying, the last thing you'd do is leave evidence of your alterations.
This second point relates to yesterday's paradoxical conclusion that the new McCartney and Stones albums were made by impostors because they sounded so authentically like McCartney and the Stones. The absence of puzzling anomalies makes the whole thing more, not less, suspicious.
Re: purty pichures!
Date: 2005-09-15 12:19 pm (UTC)Re: purty pichures!
Date: 2005-09-15 05:49 pm (UTC)I think that the way people view mechanical images today (particularly those which purport to document an event) shows an undeniable tendency to view them 'as if' they act as evidence. That is, they kind of know the image is really not evidence, but they choose to view it that way nonetheless. So, basically, I end up modeling our encounter with the mechanical image on Derrida's just decision. A decision that takes place, and must take place, but is never entirely justified.
btw, best article on this stuff imo is avital ronell's 'trauma t.v.' uses rodney king video to address similar issues. great stuff!
thanks for the post,
great fun and interesting as always,
huffa
Re: purty pichures!
Date: 2005-09-15 11:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 11:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 12:15 pm (UTC)Read the first half of the article by Chandler, but have to get going (moving today). It brought to mind aspects of Ways of Seeing by Berger, another interesting book about the relationship between image and viewer that delves into the larger cultural context of this phenomenon throughout the ages. This book had a big impact upon me when I was 18.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 01:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 01:42 pm (UTC)"Film theorists refer to the use of 'suture' (surgical stitching) - the 'invisible editing' of shot relationships which seeks to foreground the narrative and mask the ideological processes which shape the subjectivity of viewers."
Well, not quite the same point, since you're suggesting film edits are more "natural" than still images, whereas they're suggesting they merely "mask ideology".
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 02:31 pm (UTC)films don't just prop up 'dominant narrative devices', they subvert them as well, leaving room for a subjective experience outside the control of the filmmaker.
I don't buy this article's hard-line agenda of hard-line agenda bashing.
It's all an elaborte way to confirm your own existence to yourself
Date: 2005-09-15 03:04 pm (UTC)Except that I see the picture and not the thing. And you lay them out in a linear format so I see them as they are seen by the images that come before and after, but only through the framing device of my lap top, the desktop to which has an image that enters the narrative before you begin speaking. Then of course there is the prima facia self, yadda yadda yadda.
Good Morning. Nice pictures.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 03:37 pm (UTC)I found this Laptop Orchestra homepage with a preview of their music.
I'm diggin' it right now.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 04:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 05:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 04:48 pm (UTC)hope it's okay to friend thee ?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 05:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 08:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 09:25 pm (UTC)Caveat Redemptor
Date: 2005-09-15 09:23 pm (UTC)Also, your sincere use of the exclamation point is refreshing.
A.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-15 11:53 pm (UTC)The pictues you put here reminded me of your old "photoessays". Even though here you developped a surprising rythm, I sometimes miss the elaborate compositions you did there.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 04:58 am (UTC)oh and i wanted to tell you about this guy who sings pop-type favorites in tuvan throat singing style but i will do that another time as this comment will surely be buried.