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The camera is usually considered to be a passive tool under the control of the operator. This definition implicitly constrains how we use the medium, as well as how we look at – and what we see in – its interpretations of scenes, objects, events and ‘moments’. This text will suggest another way of thinking about – and using – the photographic mediu...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... most photographs, the blur resulting from the motion of the camera during exposure would be deemed a 'flaw' or weakness. In Capa's series of photographs, however, this feature is understood to be the result of -and is therefore the photo- mechanical objective 'proof' of -the soldiers' (and Capa's) frantic efforts to get safely ashore on D-Day ( Figure 5). This 'flaw' in the resulting record of the Things in Front of the Lens is therefore both the source of the 'truth' depicted in these images - and the source of their power to affect us. ...
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Citations
... Η φωτογραφία συνιστά ένα δυναμικό εργαλείο για τη διερεύνηση της αυτογνωσίας και την προσωπική ανάπτυξη, επειδή μπορεί να συλλάβει τις συναισθηματικές αντιδράσεις των ατόμων, να διευκολύνει την πρόσβαση σε βιώματα, στάσεις και συμπεριφορές που δεν έχουν αποτελέσει αντικείμενο συνειδητής επεξεργασίας, δίνοντας πρόσβαση σε ασυνείδητες διεργασίες (Rutherford, 2014). Όπως έχει υποστηριχτεί οι καλλιτεχνικές δυνατότητες της φωτογραφίας διαμορφώνουν μια νέα αισθητική προσέγγιση της αυτογνωσίας (Nickel, 2001). ...
... This 'modern position' assumes that photographs are the product of (the interaction of) three factors (Rogers 1978;Smith 1999;Rutherford 2014): i. The appearance and/or behaviour of the thing/s in front of the lens ii. ...
... While this blur might be deemed a flaw or weakness in the accuracy with which the photographs depict the thing/s in front of the lens, this contribution by the medium is the proof (the logos) of the soldiers' (and Capa's) frantic efforts to get safely ashore while under fire from the German guns. In this way, these photographs are indeed an "accurate and objective record" (Genoni 2002: 137) and "a natural and truthful" account (Fosdick and Fahmy 2007: 1) -but an accurate and objective and natural and truthful account of their photographicness (Rutherford 2014). ...
... [ Figure 13] Accordingly, rather than a documentary or social truth, the subject of the photograph -what the photo is actually 'about' -is (sometimes) the glimpse it offers of the world as it really is -but as it really is to the camera: a way of knowing the world around us which is otherwise invisible to us due to the conceptual constraints imposed by bino-chrono consciousness. The scenes and moments thus recorded did not -and sometimes could not -exist 'out there', but, as both the record and the product of a very different way of experiencing the world, were only made visible by the active contribution of photography (Rutherford 2014). ...
Over more than 30 years of commercial and fine art photographic practice, I have often noticed remarkable disparities between the scenes, objects, events or moments ‘out there’ I had attempted to record – and the images within the resulting photographs. These (sometimes subtle, sometimes profound, but rarely anticipatable) disparities between what I had seen and what the photograph shows me offer the tantalising suggestion that there may be something else going on here – but something which the popular conception of photography may hinder our ability to recognise. This article explores the implications of four central assumptions implicit within the popular conception of photography that may impede alternative ways of thinking about photographic practice. Supported by a number of photographs that depict scenes, events and ‘moments’ that I will argue were not ‘taken’ but were instead created by the act of photographing them, I will suggest that new opportunities for practice may be available by ‘re-imagining’ the practice of photography as an active – or as an act of – collaboration between medium and practitioner.
... Based on the objectives and processes of the Dadaists and Surrealists, the photographic project described above was intended to engage directly with the unconscious by allowing my intuition to select the scene, frame the image and to choose the moment at which I released the shutter. In more recent photographic projects however, I have moved away from this 'collaboration with the unconscious' and instead, have attempted to create the conditions under which the modus operandi of the medium is given primacy in determining the way in which scenes, events and moments are depicted (Rutherford, 2014). ...
As described in an earlier contribution to the journal (Photography as an Act of Collaboration – Vol. 15, Issue 3), my research explores the possibilities and implications of treating the camera and the photographic process as an active collaborator in the creation of scenes, events and ‘moments’ that did not exist until brought into being by the act of photographing them. The media artwork described here is the result of an experiment to explore the possibility of establishing the same co-operative relationship with word-processing software as a way to give voice to my unconscious that I had succeeded in establishing with the medium of photography. Despite comprehensively stripping the original text of both sense and sequence, the resulting text not only retains an uncanny degree of consistency with both the style and meaning of the original, but also reveals insights which had been only latent within the original. The result would appear to reinforce the findings of my previous research in photographic practice: that, by giving up conscious, rational control over the means of expression, we can (sometimes) create the conditions necessary for a constructive and often illuminating dialogue with the deus ex machina.
