“In the Photograph, the power of authenticity exceeds the power of representation (BARTHES, 1980: 89)”¹

In the very early days of photography, it was axiomatic that the photographic image represented something (the Object) that was there in front of the photographer, at the point in time that the photo (the Image) was taken. And by some mechanical means, an Image of the Object was created – “an automatic reproduction by the action of light” (NIEPCE, (1839 in TRACHTENBERG, 1980: 5)”².  Here was an undisputable difference between all previous art forms and the new art of photography. As John Szarkowski describes it in The Photographer’s Eye, “Paintings were made – constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes – but photography, as a man on the street put it, are taken”³.

And as Szarkowski goes on to point out, Baudelaire saw this as an antagonistic rival – “this industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy”⁴.

And yet over time, this seemingly fundamentally characteristic difference has become blurred through choice of subject matter, choices made by the photographer in creating the image, and advances made in technology of the camera itself.

So whereas Szarkowski could assuredly state that early photographers learned that “photography dealt with the actual”⁵, subsequent commentators have gone to great lengths to cement the link between Object and Image even as the connections are blurred. To give a couple of examples: Barthes, in Camera Lucida, describes the photographic referent as “not the optionally real thing to which an image or sign refers, but the necessarily real thing that has been placed before the lens, without which there would be no photograph” (BARTHES, 1980: 76) and similarly “in photography, I can never deny that the thing has been there” (BARTHES, 2980, 76). In On Photography, Sontag expresses a similar view, though she tempers the link by conceding that some distortion may occur:  “A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture”⁶.

So why, one might wonder, do Snyder and Allen feel the need to discuss in great detail the question “Is there anything peculiarly “photographic” about photography – something which sets it apart from all other ways of making pictures?” (SNYDER AND ALLEN, 1975: 143)⁷. For me, the answer lies in the fact that over time, the nature of photography, and what specifically constitutes a photograph, has indeed been blurred significantly and they discuss various different taxonomies of photographs and how each has its own flaws and shortcomings. Their conclusion, it seems to me, is that we should be wary of saying that photography is inherently different from other art forms, because in many ways it isn’t. “The documentary value of a photograph is not determined solely by Arnheim’s questions of “authenticity”, “correctness” and “truth”. We can also ask what it means, who made it, for whom it was made, and why it was made in the way it was made”(SNYDER & ALLEN, 1975: 169). In other words, context is also fundamental to our understanding of a photographic image.

One could then ask, why is the belief of a fundamental link between Object and Image still considered by many to be so important in photography?. The answer lies in the way in which photographs are now far less likely to be accepted as incontrovertible evidence of an original Object as once might have been the case. Barthes may well contend that “Photography never lies: or rather, it can lie as to meaning of the thing,…..never as to its existence” (BARTHES, 1980: 87), but there are many examples that show that this is simply no longer the case – for example, the faked images of the Loch Ness Monster or Joel Peter Watkins’s unicorn images in Night in a Small Town (2007).

Bringing this right up to the digital age, Fred Ritchin discusses how our perception of reality is now so conditioned by seeing photographs in multiple situations that we can easily fail to distinguish between an image and reality, or otherwise, behind it: “Part of the problem in distinguishing [new realities] is realizing that for many of us the world is largely envisioned, even if the absence of a camera, as photographic” (RITCHIN, 2009:21)⁸.

Even 45 years earlier, Sontag foresaw a similar problem: “what is true of photographs, is true of the world seen photographically (SONTAG, 1977: 79), and John Winogrand once described his own working practice by saying “I photograph to see what the world looks like photographically”.

In my own practice, as a mainly landscape photographer, I used to think that I was largely photographing a very real world in front of my eyes, and creating an image in its likeness, essentially copying nature if you will. I now see the act of photography in a very different way. Yes, there in a landscape in front of me, that much remains true, by I choose the position of the shot, the time of day, the camera, the lens, the focus; and most importantly, I choose the frame, I choose what is and what is not in the image. I choose what happens to the image in post-production. So this is my interpretation of that landscape at that moment in time, and in that process I see myself as much an artist, painting a picture, as a photographer, creating an image.

And to return to the statement by Barthes that “authenticity” exceeds the “power of representation”, my personal feeling is that this is no longer the case. Authenticity is important in many situations, reportage, documentary etc, but much of modern photography is fundamentally about taking a nugget of reality (though not even that these days) and building a whole edifice of imagination around it (like layers in photoshop) to create a new visual idea. Deliberate fakery is not too my taste, but acknowledged flights of fantasy and creation are the essence of creative art, and photography is as good a medium as any to facilitate this.

Notes

1. BARTHES, Roland (1980) Camera Lucida London: Vintage.
2. NIEPCE, Joseph (1839) ‘Memoire on the Heliograph’ in TRACHTENBERG, Alan (1980) Classic Essays on Photography New Haven: Leete’s Island Books.
3. SZARKOWSKI, John (1966) The Photographer’s Eye New York: Museum of Modern Art (intro)
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. SONTAG, Susan (1977) On Photography, London: Penguin, p5.
7. SNYDER, Joel and ALLEN, Neil Walsh (1975) “Photography, Vision and Representation” in Critical Enquiry Vol. 2, No. 1 (autumn 1975).
8. RITCHIN, Fred (2009) After Photography, China: Norton Paperback.