On Bazin & The Ontology of the Photographic Image

In order to find non-practical aims or ends beyond human enterprises or activities, one needs a considerable amount of research, because at the end of day, it is very difficult to find aims or ends which cannot be reduced to pragmatic concerns. In this respect, art as a human enterprise or activity can its own set of practical ends such as finding a way to cope with earth that seems hostile or at least indifferent to human beings, or standing against the death which is in fact inevitable end for the human beings etc. Religion can be another human enterprise seeking for similar ends like art and this condition might be one of the factors that take place in their intersection. So although at first sight it seems to be a bit simplistic, I agree with Bazin concerning his argument that embalming the dead might be taken as a fundamental factor in the creation of plastic arts. In other words, human beings’ struggle against death which is in fact inevitable for them might be the source of their artistic creations.

When Bazin talks about the aims beyond the mummification process, the part that I found interesting is the part in which he tells about the terra cotta statuettes as substitutions for mummies. I take this as an illustration of how representation of something is used for this something itself, i.e. terra cotta statuettes for mummies. Although this act has a religious background in itself, through this substitution of representation for the thing it represents, use of representation as a possible way of coping with earth or standing against the death finds its echoes in the substitution of image for model.

Bazin’s another point that appeals me is his statement of “Perspective was the original sin of Western painting”, though I do not agree with the previous distinction that he makes concerning the aesthetic and the psychological needs. Firstly, Bazin associates the aesthetic ambition with the expression of spiritual reality. In my opinion, expression of spiritual reality seems to be a part of psychological ambition rather than the aesthetic one. Secondly, Bazin says that duplication of the world outside is a psychological ambition, but I think, on the contrary it is an aesthetic ambition. Moreover, if it is very successful in fooling the eye, i.e. if it creates the illusion of reality successfully, why do we call this act as pseudorealism and associate it with psychological ambition? In this trompe l’oeil paintings of the Baroque period stems from the aesthetic ambition rather than the psychological one.

The emphasis that Bazin makes on the nonliving agent determining the objective character of photography in relation with the status of the painter highly makes sense. In fact what the photography and cinema do – in my opinion – is to surpass the role of human as the representing medium which is considerably insufficient when s/he is compared with the camera. Although role of human agent who uses the camera and objectivity of camera in this context are disputable, the success of the camera in representing the reality as it is seen by us or in creating the illusion of reality cannot be neglected. Thus Bazin argues: “Although the final result may reflect something of his [photographer] personality, this does not play the same role as is played by that of the painter” (Bazin 13).

Another interesting remark that Bazin makes is on page 14. Here, Bazin makes a reference to embalming process again, but in relation with photography in the sense that photography embalms time, like Egyptians embalms the death body. The point is the same, to rescue the body which is embalmed from the corruption of time. And photography does this via freeing the object from the conditions of spatiotemporality, i.e. capturing it in a frame.

Bazin, A. (2005). What is cinema? Vol. 1. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

M. Kemal İz