Some Problems of Bazin's Phenomenological Image - 3

Mitchell uses the concept of family resemblances in order to deconstruct the use of image in certain discourses. He draws a diagram in which certain uses of the word “image” is shown:

I added photography to show its place in Bazin’s hierarchy. Mitchell’s argument, as well as Wittgenstein’s, is that this hierarchy does not reflect reality. It only reflects language in use. The graphic image, or in Bazin’s case the photographic image is the most “literal” use of the word image. As we go towards right, the use of the word image becomes more and more figurative. In other words, the photographic image is the image that is most realistic because the other images are somewhat improper copies of the real objects. For example the impressions of objects in our minds are not as stable as photographs so we tend to argue that mental images cannot represent reality as successfully as photographs can.

So Mitchell tries to make a Wittgensteinian move by describing a situation where there are no minds. If there were no minds, than there would be no more images. Not because we could not make any more images, but because there would be no one to recognize an image as an image. This is a “paradoxical trick of consciousness”. When we see a photograph of an apple, we recognize the apple as “there” and “not there” at the same time. We do not say that there is an apple there, but we recognize that it is an apple. However when a duck responds to a decoy duck, it is not responding to an image of a duck, it is responding to a duck itself. This is because the duck does not recognize the image of the duck as an image. The same thing happens when people see TV for the first time in their lives, they cannot discern images from real people or things.

When we try to point to a mental image and say that there is a mental image we are unable to recognize it as an image because we do not know how to recognize it as an image. We do not have that knowledge because we cannot point to it. Can it be the only difference between a photograph and a mental image? That we cannot point to a mental image?

In order to understand how our consciousness works, we try to imagine it as things which reflect images. In certain points in philosophy, mind has been imagined as a mirror, a camera or a camera obscura. Bazin imagines mind as a camera which takes pictures of the world. Although it is a camera which works with language (I know this is a very crude metaphor), it is still another picture of how consciousness works. Wittgenstein argues that mind can have an image of itself in anyway it fancies or it may not have an image of itself at all. But when the mind is pictured as a camera, this is not a necessity or in other words, this is not an ontological claim. The mind can refuse to represent itself just as it can refuse to see a painting as a representation of something. There are no rules of representation in painting or in cinema; it is my opinion that otherwise we would not have those dialectic movements that Bazin talks about. If there is something necessary, maybe it is the necessity for different representations or schemes of formation of mental and material images.

Bazin privileges photographic image because mental image is a mystical thing. On the other hand, is it not more natural than a photograph to have a mental image? We can move from right to left in the above diagram just as easily we move from left to right:

“We  could just  as  easily replace  what  we  call  "the  physical  manipulation of  signs"  (painting, writing,  speaking)  with locutions such as "thinking on paper, out  loud, in  images,  etc."

I really like the idea that we can think painting as “thinking on paper” and argue that photograph itself is a false representation of how we perceive or think about the world. Although I get how photographic image is more similar to our ordinary perception, I think that is only one way to think about our perception. We are also capable of having extraordinary perceptions of reality. And why would we want to get rid of these different ways of imagining or perceiving the world just because they are not similar to our ordinary perception?

Impressions of Reality

Photographic image; as a mechanic tool for immortality, as a way to freeze and keep the impression of reality, as an art...

Andre Bazin’s ideas of realism in cinema try to place this incredible/magical mechanic agent in the most effective position to serve as a ″reality catcher″. For this reason, he offers some basic applications to realize this aim: deep-focus cinematography which keeps all actions in focus as given equal importance in the same shot and long-take used in parallel. And also offers an analytic editting procedure, unlike montage, just to serve altering emphasis and viewpoint, not for imposing expressionistic meaning or distorting unity of an event. As he offers that it is the most democratic way camera can work, still there is the problem of subjectivity. As one tries to represent the impression of reality, although one tries to abstract his/her self ideally, abstraction of subjectivity and human factor is almost impossible and the result is always –even if not intended- one’s impression of reality.

And the realism aimed by Bazin has 3 facets: ontological, dramatic and psychological. Bazin suggests that ontological status is realized due to the photographic image’s automatic and mechanical recording capacity, ″taking an impression, by the manipulation of light″ and transfering it to the image. However, fulfilled developments changed the recording capacity of the photographic image to a great extent, the procedure do not need only a ″click″ to start the chemical process anymore and digital environment became able to function without reality and also beyond reality. The first example of that beyond reality perception was Muybridge’s, as human eye may not perceive horse’s feet were actually all of the ground, photographic image was able to represent this. Digital capabilities offer people to see much more than they can perceive with their naked eyes. For example, in macro photography one become able to notice the tiny hairs of an insect; although bursting of a balloon full of water was perceived only in few steps burst and splash, high-speed photography represents the impression of reality, the water remaining in air before splashing, which is not possible to be perceived by the naked human eye. As photographic image became capable to represent without and beyond the reality today it is much more complicated to talk about an ontological realism that Bazin defines. On the other hand as Bazin offers, deep-focus and long-take cinematography is the most efficient technique to create dramatic and psychological realism, perception of reality changes in time. One camera movement once perceived unreal, may be perceived part of the impression of reality in time, like shaking the camera etc. and vice versa, one realistic camera movement in an old movie may be perceived unreal today.

As we try to examine the impression of reality in fiction film it is seen that spectator is open to perceive cut scenes as a whole and fill the blanks; for example, in one scene one gets in the train and the next scene one arrives. Getting inside to the train and steping outside creates the impression of reality that one traveled –even if travel process is not shown. Contemporary film theorists such as Heath defines this impression of reality not based on image’s relation to reality but rather, spectator’s positioning and relation with the image as Buckland states: ″According to this theory, realism is nothing more than an effect of the successful positioning of the spectator into an imaginary relation to the image, a position which creates a sense that the film’s space and diegesis is unified and harmonious. (p.202)″

After all, even the most objective object (camera) is not able to limit completely the presence of the subjective subject and although representing strong impressions of reality is possible, absolute reality is hard to catch.

*

Links:

http://www.photographymojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/high-speed-balloon.jpg

Some Problems of Bazin's Phenomenological Image - 2

First of all, phenomenology is itself an answer to the Kantian distinction between noumenon and phenomenon. This distinction in Kant leads to the strange conclusion that everything is phenomenological representation. In phenomenology, as we have seen, there is no such distinction. The only place to talk about objective knowledge is consciousness and moreover, there is no “outside” of consciousness, the objective world shows itself to consciousness and by doing phenomenology we gain objective knowledge about the world. In this sense, it would seem that whatever we find in consciousness should be equally legitimate for objective knowledge but this is not exactly the case. Rather it is the mechanisms of the cognition, of formations of thinking that is objective and not specifically the content but these mechanisms are the basis for objective knowledge.

Now if montage imposes a certain meaning on the viewer through ingrained symbolism on the image and therefore eliminates ambiguity, this would mean that, in turn, the image created by deep focus is itself more in line with how our cognition works because it is rich with possible meanings. Yet if our consciousness cognizes a world rich with ambiguous meaning, why would it stop cognizing the world like this when it is faced with an image imbued with symbolism? Since it would not shift into another mode of cognition when faced with a graphic image, every image, whatever the style of representation, should be imbued with ambiguousness by consciousness itself. Photographic image is not another mode of cognition; it is another means of representation. And every “object” in the world is cognized by the same mechanisms that phenomenology discusses.

Iconology: image, text, ideology by Mitchell begins with the chapter titled “What is an image?” and this chapter opens with a quote from Sartre (who is a phenomenologist by the way):

“It is one thing…to apprehend directly an image as image, and another thing to shape ideas regarding the nature of images in general.”

Mitchell uses Wittgenstein to question the privileged position of the graphic image in certain discourses. Wittgenstein’s philosophy is very unique in its approach to language. Although he is similar to structuralist / post-structuralist movement in the importance he gives to language, his approach is very distinct. Very roughly, he argues that the philosophical problems are in fact only problems that exist because of the uncritical use of language and if we can somehow show how these are not actual problems we can get rid of them. In this sense, he argues that there is no essence to language or mind (the word “essence” is also problematic), that words gain meaning through context (the meanings are “fuzzy”, no one-to-one correspondence between a word and its meaning) and what we think as essential features of things such as “games” are only related through family resemblances i.e. “overlapping similarities”. He gives the example of games to explain his concept of family resemblances. We call hide and seek, chess and Grand Theft Auto all as games. But these activities we call games do not have one essential feature. In some games you do not win or lose, some you play alone and so on.

I will be talking about Mitchell’s application of Wittgensteinian investigation of the uses of words in different contexts in order to show that photographic image may not actually have this privileged status, that maybe there is no distinction (aside from ontological differences which are not enough to warrant psychological realism) between any kind of image, imaginary or photographic.

Some Problems of Bazin's Phenomenological Image - 1

In “Ontology of The Photographic Image”, Bazin argues that the symbolic (spiritual expressiveness) and realist tendencies shaped the Western painting. However, Western painting mistook the pseudorealism of fooling the eye by introducing a perspectivist approach with true realism which would show the world both in its essence and in its concreteness.

The originality of photograph lies in its essential objectiveness: there is no intentional agent intervening in the process of the duplication of reality. In this sense, the absence of a narrator, of a “mind” makes photography what it is. Bazin talks about two art movements towards the end of the essay and of course finds both of them inferior to photography. One is impressionist realism (which adds movement as something essential to human experience and perception) and the other is surrealism. Now it is evident that Bazin favors realism. He even calls the paintings of surrealists as “monstrosities”. Ironically, it is surrealists who turn to the technology of photography as a tool in their works:

The surrealist does not consider his aesthetic purpose and the mechanical effect of the image on our imaginations as things apart. For him, the logical distinction between what is imaginary and what is real tends to disappear. Every image is to be seen as an object and every object as an image.*

I will be focusing on this passage and argue that this distinction between imaginary and real may be as nonexistent as surrealists think. But first, I will talk about Bazin’s realism a bit.

Now after giving his dialectical history of cinema by pointing out the privileged position of editing and deep focus, Bazin gives three kinds of realism that cinema provides us. One is the ontological realism. This one is fairly straightforward and the least problematic. Realism is itself an ontological claim and it is an intuitive and established philosophical position. The other two realisms, namely dramatic and psychological realism are a bit different since they introduce relations between the subject and the object and therefore these two are, to an extent, epistemological claims. In other words, by including the subjective experience of reality, Bazin argues that what we perceive in the photographic image is reality itself. As such, this is an epistemological claim and Bazin is a phenomenologist in this sense. For phenomenology, reality is not something independent of experience but it is also not subjective since by focusing on the conscious perception of reality, phenomenology is able to give an objective ground for the consciousness in which this world we experience resides in / emerges for us.

Bazin argues that the image must be something that is open to several meanings when he talks about montage as ruling out ambiguity. The use of depth of focus in Citizen Kane is important because the uncertainty of meaning is built into the image itself. And if we combine this with his argument that depth of focus provides us with psychological realism, his phenomenologist position becomes more apparent.  

Bazin’s use of phenomenology only serves as a tool for him to include the dimensions of history and experience into the study of cinema. However, he is privileging the deep focus cinematography as the image which better reflects the phenomenological reality. Therefore he also privileges photography as the most important event in the history of plastic art. While this is itself questionable, I will be focusing on his conception of image as the privileged representation of reality.


*This seems to me exactly what Bazin wants when he focuses on realism this much. Isn't photographic image's superiority a result of its ability to bridge this gap between the mechanical effects of the image on the mind (a real perception of reality) and the intentional effects of the artist on the image?