In my last blog I wrote:
" For the sake of argument, I will say that objective reality and truth did not exist until the invention of the photograph. Before the invention, the reality of any experience was only as real as the recollections of those who had seen the experience and those whom they had told about it."
Reading Radical Alterity, I came across the notion that photographs do not give an accurate representation of the object they are trying to photograph. Rather than give context by seeing the object in its natural state, the photograph isolates the object and does not allow to see what is happening before or after that particular point in time, or even what exists directly outside of the clear boundaries of the photograph. While these are valid criticisms, I cannot allow myself to fully buy into that idea.
As a history major, I am often asked to analyze a photograph to gain a clearer understanding of the time period and subject which it documents. Never have I better understood the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" as when i have been asked to learn in this way. Of course, to analyze a picture in this manner does take some degree of prior context.
All forms of media have shortcomings. No matter how well one writes, no description can give a completely accurate depiction of a scene, event, or feeling. Videorecording has much the same problems as photograph, just not to the same extent. Also with video, some portion of the recording is nearly guaranteed to be excessive, whereas a good photograph is far more likely to articulate what the photographer wishes to convey.
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This blogpost is very interesting to me because it seems like a willful misinterpretation of Baudrillard's message about photography in Radical Alterity.
ReplyDeleteYou do this to highlight your love of photography and its importance to you in understanding history. You're a radically visual person.
I would say in contrast that Baudrillard is a radically alternative person. He has a love of the exotic, of what makes humans different from each other. Not different in a superficial sense (fashion, habit, law) but in an almost metaphysical sense.
He's directly arguing against your connection between "objective reality" and the invention of the photograph. For Baudrillard there is no 'objective reality' except that which our senses project onto what we term 'objects.' For you, when you see something, it becomes an 'object.' He is interested in the way that we have become a step removed from the process by having a device both perceive for us and record that perception.
Let me throw a lyric and a cliche at you because they are at the heart of what I'm trying to communicate:
'Just cause you see it doesn't mean it's there.'
and
'There is more than meets the eye.'
If vision and that which is perceptible through the eye is your objective reality, then by all means, give us photographic histories, convert what you see in mind's eye through research into what for you is historical truth.
But just keep in mind there are radically different ways of perceiving this same truth. Not only with the other four senses, but even outside the senses (I'm not even taking into account the senses of other species.) Don't make that age old mistake of taking your eye for the universal eye, even if that faith makes you a better historian.