Can a Film be a Photographic Representation?
“A film is a photograph of a dramatic representation; it is not, because it cannot be, a photographic representation”.
The aim of this essay is to discuss two aspects of this claim. Essentially there ar two claims embedded within this statement. The first is that photographic representation is a contradiction. Scruton argues that there can be no such thing as a representation of a sbject in a photograph, but merely ‘ a surrogate’. The implication being that photographs have less artistic merit than other truly representational mediums, such as literature or painting. The second claim is that this argument extends into the realm of cinema in virtue of being a photographic art form, the implication being that cinematic artistic merit falls short of painting on the same grounds. The aim of this essay is to discuss, largely, the first claim and several counter arguments put forward against it by other philosophers, since in my opinion the two claims are dependent. The essay will conclude with a discussion of the role of these claims in cinema,
One may preface this topic by stating an obvious point. ‘Surely a painting and a photograph are the same thing. They are frames filled with content. A painting may fill a wall, a ceiling, a canvas, in the same way a photograph fills a piece of light-receptive paper’. The obvious answer is that they are different by virtue of the medium, or process, through which the content fills the frame. Photography employs the use of light and chemicals to fill the canvas at once, while a painting in the traditional sense requires building the canvas up from scratch or, to be more precise, working with those elements the admixture of which construe the objects already present in the subject-matter of a photo (shape, colour, depth, etc.).
In his essay ‘Photography and Representation’ Roger Scruton argues that photography is not a representational art form in the sense that a painting is. The argument is straightforward: Painting and photography have two fundamentally different means of producing their end-products. Painting stands in an intentional relation to its subject, while photography stands in a causal one. What does he means by this? It means that in virtue of their physical processes (and this alone) both have two different ideals. The ideal of painting is to express intention while the other is to record a visual perception (like a tape recorder to music).
Scruton draws out several implications of this categorization, which I shall discuss individually.
1. “The ideal photograph also yields an appearance, but the appearance is not interesting as the realisation of an intention but rather as a record of how an actual object looked”1
Here Scruton asserts that photography serves the purpose of recording better than expressing. Satellite photographs, criminal photographs, architectural photographs serve the purpose of showing data. They are proofs of events. Merely because cameras serve this purpose well, does not imply that all photographs are made with this same intention.
2. “With an ideal photograph it is neither necessary nor even possible that the photographer’s intention should enter as a serious factor in determining
How the picture is seen.”2
One way of reading Scrton’s use of intention is simply as ‘having a motive’. Scruton is making a stronger claim in this sentence. Intentions should not play a role in how a picture is seen. It would be innocuous to assert the inverse however: that for a photograph to have aesthetic value it must entirely unintentional. To start off with, it would be ridiculous to say that the process of taking a photo is unintentional. By virtue of being act of interest in any perception one is expressing intention. Taking a photograph blindly, holding the cam and hoping that something interesting turns up on the film counts as intention precisely that motive. Merely the act of clicking clicking the button is an intention. This may not apply to accidental photos. It may be a different matter to find aesthetic interest in the image of the inside of a woman’s handbag. But such an accidental photo would not be ‘taking’ a photo but merely an accident. Scruton must concede to there being some form of intention in the basic sense when considering the photos. Therefore every time one looks at a photograph one accepts that some form of intention behind the taking of it was present. This seems tautologous. As an analogy, to what extent does Jackson Pollock have control over the way his buckets of paint hit the canvas, or to what extent does Hermann Nitszch have over the sprays of blood across his works?
What Scruton implies by intention is something else. It is not the intention of the artist, but the expression of the artist which counts as intention. If we qualify Scruton’s distinction we get the claim that both in the creation and the apprehension of the end-product (artist and audience) the subject-matter incriminates upon the aesthetic qualities of the photograph. It is easier to say that photographs express little more than the subject contained in it. This is the point that Scruton makes. What these examples illustrate is the degree of involvement the creator of the end-product has in its making. By virtue of being a strictly mechanical process, photography has the potential of producing end-products which have little or no involvement of the artist, whereas painting implies that the artist was clearly aware of each and every step during its making. It is clear that the term potential is crucial in this argument. We may restate Scruton’s claim. It is not only not necessary that intentions determine how the viewer appreciates (since aesthetic value is what it boils down to) a photograph, but it is impossible for the intentions to play a part its appreciation in toto. There is a world of difference between the two arguments. The former claim permits non genuine aesthetic value to creep into the end-product, the latter asserts the by virtue of the medium, all aesthetic value is not genuine. The mechanical difference enables any joe average to put himself into an artistic mood when holding the camera, and with sufficient faith in his poetic allusions to the perceived object, produce, without any effort other than control of what his memory of other photographs, something unique. I accept the argument from potential as quite tautologous since its opposite: that all photographs express, or communicate aesthetic value is abusrd.
It is now possible to clarify the first claim above. The bizarre but curious representation of the inside of a woman’s handbag taken by the camera by accident is the same as spilt ink on a piece of paper. But the potential to produce artistic curiosities doesn’t imply that nothing but such artistic curiosites can be produced by the photographer. In the essay “Cinematic Art” Berys Gaut points out this fallacy in Scrutons argument: “But why ever should the logical possibility of naturally occurring photographs show that non-manipulated photographs do not involve the expression of intentions?” It is clear that the possibility of scribbling on memo-pads while on the telephone doesn’t imply that painting can be nothing more than the scribbling of deranged artists. Whether a the medium of photography therefore lacks the capacity of fictional “incompetence” does not support the idea that all photgraphs are incapable of expressing any intention – in the sense of individual artistic expression.
Scrutons argument must be construed in different terms. TO reiterate what was mentioned before. Due to the nature of photographic medium it is impssible to deny that some degree of aesthetic value is what is provided by the object in front of the camera during the shoot and when the audience see the final print. It is in this formulation, I believe Scrton’s argument is the most strognets. When someone sees a photo of a family, or a street taken a century ago, it evokes emotions in the viewer not because of the way the photo is taken (since other than black and white photography there wasn’t a choice back then) but because of the image it is a surrogate of. And this reaction to the image, from the viewers side is inevitable in virtue of being a direct representation of reality. The sense of reality permeates the image. Even if the photographer were to assemble the photograph so as to creat the sense of surreality, the objects within are always viewed as objects which existed in time and space, and photography cannot break this boundary. When comparing the physical act of creating either art form, this distinction becomes clear. Unlike painting, which requires that an image be taken directly form the imagination and having this image placed on the canvas with the help of nothing but one’s hands, photography has the canvas already made up for one. The viewfinder presents the subject matter, all that is required is too select where the different objects belong on the canvas. It is impossibl to work from nothing with the medium of photography.
The main implication is that because of the two distinct ideals, the more a photographer tries to break the bounds of photography, the more he is creating a painting.
Photography is clamped down into place by the nature of its medium. Not only is there room or accidental curiosities, but regardless how much technological improvement there is, it does not serve the cause, because then photography becomes a variety of painting and loses its ideal. This seems obvious at first glance. A photographer may get round the individual attacks on aesthetic value by asserting any number of individual technological requirements which raises it to a skill equal to that of painting, the problem however as asserted by Nigel Warburton in his essay “Infividual style in photographic art”, is that such arguments merely fall nto the trap set by Scruton. Even, as in King’s essay (Scruton and Reasns for Looking at Photographs) some non-technical aesthetic value could be taken from the medium, discussions of this sort always fall back into variations of the subject and not purley of the intention. For one thing, it might be stated simply that a photograph which has been assembled like a painting has become a painting.
But Warburton has a critical counterargument: He states that Scruton is begging the question in defining two distinct mediums but relating them one criterion of evaluation. “However, is is fairly obvious that if you define representation purely in terms of what occurs in painting, then it is hardly surprising to find that the techniques of representation in other art forms are borrowed from painting”. Warburton then goes on to discuss different forms of evaluation critically ignored by philosophers, in particular that photographs must be viewed in the light of an entire series and context and not simply on their own. Bu then we arrive at another distinction: between the act of taking a photo as a creative process, and the style within a photo belongs. If we delve into the realm of style then it is clear tha photographs can become icons in art, for example the twin towers building. But this depends more on the critical reception than the intention.
The conclusive question is thus whether these ‘ideals’ postulated by Scruton bear any significance to the aesthetic interest of photography.
Scruton extends the argument into cinema. "A film is a photograph of a dramatic representation, and whatever representation properties belong to it belong by virtue of the representation that is effected in the dramatic action, that is, by virtue of the words and activities of the actors in the film."3
In the light of many revolutionary cinematic techniques. Such a statement seems simplistic. David Lynch's Eraserhead, of Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, are examples of techniques which do not fall the trap of lacking aesthetic interest in the way 3D extravaganza depreciates the value of technology in film. The argument that the representational aspect in film is produced by the actors alone is clearly lost when we compare narrative to a screenplay. The difference is not only those stage-directions, but also the metaphors which come out of language alone. But surely that can also be produced by film, if not better? For example, in Eraserhead a plethora of meanings arise out of non-human objects, symbols such as the moving chicken-breast sequence, the baby's flying head sequence.
In fact, even the mixture of the non-representational non-variable aspects, such as bed, furniture, house, with the surreal undertones - seems to create the surreal. The argument in place for photography seems to support the cause of cinema begin a valid art, because the necessity of portraying real-subject matter is juxtaposed with the surreal edge a film director can create. It would be hard to dismiss a comparison between the surrealism of Eraserhead and the same type of surrealism expressed in the works of Kafka or Gogol. Other works of art such as The Sacrifice by Tarkovski. The drawn out panning - as a means to stimulate the viewer to think about the story. Time can be used to create space for the viewer to think,
Scruton argues that painting has no grammar. Whereas language can be reduced to individual words, meaning can be read through it parts alone, whereas in paintings these parts have no fixed reference but are selected by the viewer at will when viewing the painting. The choices are infinite. The psychological process of viewing a painting has more than the communication of the grammar itself. The reasons are not reducible to logical statements. The interpretation is a holistic one, from which we derive much of the pleasure of reading. Surely then, this holistic understanding is something which cinematography can produce, if not better?
Bibliography:
Roger Scruton, "Photography and Representation" in Neill and Ridley (eds.), Arguing about Art, 1st and 2nd eds. (SL, DL), and in his The Aesthetic Understanding (DL)..
William King, "Scruton and Reasons for looking at Photographs" in Neill and Ridley (eds.), Arguing about Art, 1st and 2nd eds. (SL, DL).
Nigel Warburton, "Individual Style in Photographic Art", Arguing about Art, 2nd ed. (SL, DL); also British Journal of Aesthetics, 36, 1996, pp. 389-97.
Robert Wicks, "Photography as a Representational Art", British Journal of Aesthetics, 29, 1989, pp. 1-9.
Berys Gaut, "Cinematic Art", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 60, 2002, pp. 299-312.
1 Roger Scruton, "Photography and Representation"
2 Roger Scruton, "Photography and Representation" in Neill and Ridley (eds.),
3 Roger Scruton, "Photography and Representation" in Neill and Ridley (eds.),