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![What happens to reality? What happens to representation? But when, in a Virtual world, the referent disappears, fades away in the technical programming of the image, when there is no real world facing a sensitive film [...], then there can be no real representation possible.Baudrillard, quoted in the essay “Jeff Wall and the Poetic Picture: With Bergson and Deleuze towards a Photo-theory beyond Representation” (Leen DeBolle, Rhizomes, Issue 23, 2012).I stumbled across this quote from French philosopher and habitual pessimist Jean Baudrillard by accident as I was looking for some information about mushrooms (is is not as far fetched a connection as one can imagine). What Baudrillard talks about here is what constitutes Real in a digital world, where the object is not – as with traditional photography – being exposed onto a light sensitive film. Baudrillard focused much attention on the media and especially the self replicating aspects of media – noise, both visual and auditory, that lack any origin outside of the “system” of media itself. For him (and here I must be very clear that it’s been a Very Long Time since I last read Baudrillard, please correct me if I am wrong) Media was very much the curtain separating humans from Reality – by perpetuating the capitalist system that feed us content to keep us... content. Within this system even the groups or people that rebel against it are part of the same system helping to perpetuate the lie of choice and free will. It wasn’t by coincidence that Baudrillards book Simulacra and Simulation can be found in Neo’s book case in the movie The Matrix. Anyways – and as usual – nothing of this has anything to do with the point I wanted to make. It is important, writes DeBolle, to establish the distinction between two types of pictures – ¨descriptive images’, namely photography for documentary, journalistic or recording purposes, and ‘poetic images’ for artistic or creative purposes appealing to the imagination. For the first category, she argues, the “reality value of the pictures representational status is more precarious” than for the second. Now, this is what I find interesting. There is a societal norm that “news” photography is supposed to be edited as little as possible in order to provide as an authentic image of what happened as possible. And in the purely pragmatic sense I understand the sentiment, but when is a photo ever neutral? All photos are by definition manipulated. A photo – and I write this very aware of the name of this blog – is always a biased, or manipulated, view of the motif. You can leave the picture as unedited as you want, but during the act of taking the photo every single step up ‘till the release of the shutter has been manipulated. You have gone to a specific place or event, positioned yourself where the chances are something will happen, moved to get the best angle and then taken the shot. All photography creates an emotional response regardless if it is “descriptive” or “poetic”. I find that this is what so much of the academic debate miss – what is real isn’t really the point (unless – naturally – you want to control the narrative that decides what is perceived as Real), all photography regardless of the degree of manipulation is always a concretisation of the photographer. It is, like poetry, a window into the mind of the author.
What is reality in a world where everything can be manipulated? This is an open question, I don’t have the answer. But I think that it can be found in the emotional response. But it is very important to remember that no matter the intensity of the emotion one should never equate Emotion with Truth. #original photography #photographers on tumblr #Original Phtography](https://64.media.tumblr.com/adda68918ada065867a0b818f6a89e80/34da18cc1f70952d-e5/s1280x1920/f702f8bbb4ab7b6cefcdafa73023b3cb476879b2.jpg)
reality-inflicted18.05.2022 - 20 minutes ago"What happens to reality? What happens to representation? But when, in a Virtual world, the referent disappears, fades away in the technical programming of the image, when there is no real world facing a sensitive film [...], then there can be no real representation possible."
Baudrillard, quoted in the essay “Jeff Wall and the Poetic Picture: With Bergson and Deleuze towards a Photo-theory beyond Representation” (Leen DeBolle, Rhizomes, Issue 23, 2012).
I stumbled across this quote from French philosopher and habitual pessimist Jean Baudrillard by accident as I was looking for some information about mushrooms (is is not as far fetched a connection as one can imagine). What Baudrillard talks about here is what constitutes Real in a digital world, where the object is not – as with traditional photography – being exposed onto a light sensitive film. Baudrillard focused much attention on the media and especially the self replicating aspects of media – noise, both visual and auditory, that lack any origin outside of the “system” of media itself. For him (and here I must be very clear that it’s been a Very Long Time since I last read Baudrillard, please correct me if I am wrong) Media was very much the curtain separating humans from Reality – by perpetuating the capitalist system that feed us content to keep us... content. Within this system even the groups or people that rebel against it are part of the same system helping to perpetuate the lie of choice and free will. It wasn’t by coincidence that Baudrillards book Simulacra and Simulation can be found in Neo’s book case in the movie The Matrix. Anyways – and as usual – nothing of this has anything to do with the point I wanted to make.
It is important, writes DeBolle, to establish the distinction between two types of pictures – ¨descriptive images’, namely photography for documentary, journalistic or recording purposes, and ‘poetic images’ for artistic or creative purposes appealing to the imagination. For the first category, she argues, the “reality value of the pictures representational status is more precarious” than for the second. Now, this is what I find interesting. There is a societal norm that “news” photography is supposed to be edited as little as possible in order to provide as an authentic image of what happened as possible. And in the purely pragmatic sense I understand the sentiment, but when is a photo ever neutral? All photos are by definition manipulated. A photo – and I write this very aware of the name of this blog – is always a biased, or manipulated, view of the motif. You can leave the picture as unedited as you want, but during the act of taking the photo every single step up ‘till the release of the shutter has been manipulated. You have gone to a specific place or event, positioned yourself where the chances are something will happen, moved to get the best angle and then taken the shot. All photography creates an emotional response regardless if it is “descriptive” or “poetic”. I find that this is what so much of the academic debate miss – what is real isn’t really the point (unless – naturally – you want to control the narrative that decides what is perceived as Real), all photography regardless of the degree of manipulation is always a concretisation of the photographer. It is, like poetry, a window into the mind of the author. What is reality in a world where everything can be manipulated? This is an open question, I don’t have the answer. But I think that it can be found in the emotional response. But it is very important to remember that no matter the intensity of the emotion one should never equate Emotion with Truth.
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ishikorokoroishi18.05.2022 - 39 minutes ago
Photo by Ishikoro.
Series : Flowers and plants. Japan, 2022.
Love & Peace
33
ishikorokoroishi18.05.2022 - 41 minutes ago
Photo by Ishikoro.
Series : Flowers and plants. Japan, 2022.
Love & Peace
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williammarksommer18.05.2022 - 1 hour agoOwn The Strip / Subsequent Failed Projects
Nevada
Abandoned West
Hasselblad 500c/m
Kodak Tmax 400iso
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