STANDPUNT : UNDERSTANDING A PHOTOGRAPH ( JOHN BERGER )

AANPASSING BLOG CONCEPT

Vanaf nu, enkel nog de volgende rubrieken op deze blog:

1. standpunten en visies [ STANDPUNT ] van externe auteurs of van mezelf ivm fotografie en beeldtaal of kunst in het algemeen, desgevallend samen met mijn persoonlijke inschatting of (kritische) analyse van de standpunten of visies van de externe auteur .

2. presentatie en bespreking van blogs/sites [ FOTOGRAFIE / FOTOGRAAF / KUNST ] geselecteerd op bepaalde visies over fotografie en beeldtaal of over kunst in het algemeen en op bepaalde fotografen die, samen met hun werk, ook een eigen visie op zijn/haar werk(wijze) of doelstellingen ontwikkelen en uitleggen, eventueel aangevuld met mijn eigen standpunten, analyse of kritische beschouwingen.

3. eigen foto's [ ALBUM ] geselecteerd op een welbepaalde persoonlijke visie en/of werkwijze mbt tot beeldtaal en/of fotografische expressie, ingedeeld in welbepaalde categorieën en geplaatst in aparte albums op een aparte site waar ze via een link, als geheel, rustig en in hoge resolutie desgewenst kunnen worden bekeken.

Alle vroeger geplaatste items en foto's blijven voorlopig staan of worden geheel of gedeeltelijk 'herplaatst' binnen dit nieuw concept. Voor zover de structuur en instrumenten van het blogger concept het toelaten, zal ik sommige 'oude' items proberen te verzamelen en herschikken in één rubriek, een soort 'historisch archief'.

Items mbt 'taal' (gesproken/gezongen en geschreven taal, alsook gebaren talen), het menselijk taalvermogen en de talen diversiteit, (universele) grammaticale taal structuren, semantische en communicatieve taal functies en dus ook items over literatuur, poëzie, mimiek en dans) zal ik op een aparte, nieuw te openen 'taal blog' plaatsen.
'Taal items' die een rechtstreeks verband hebben met 'beeld taal' of die daarmee in een betekenisvol verband gebracht (kunnen) worden, zal ik echter wel nog op deze blog plaatsen, onder één van de hierboven genoemde rubrieken.


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John Berger
For over a century, photographers and their apologists have argued that photography
deserves to be considered a fine art. It is hard to know how far the apologetics have
succeeded. Certainly the vast majority of people do not consider photography an art,
even whilst they practise, enjoy, use and value it. The argument of apologists (and I
myself have been among them) has been a little academic.
It now seems clear that photography deserves to be considered as though it were not a
fine art. It looks as though photography (whatever kind of activity it may be) is going to
outlive painting and sculpture as we have thought of them since the Renaissance. It now
seems fortunate that few museums have had sufficient initiative to open photographic
departments, for it means that few photographs have been preserved in sacred isolation,
it means that the public have not come to think of any photographs as being
beyond them. (Museums function like homes of the nobility to which the public at
certain hours are admitted as visitors. The class nature of the 'nobility' may vary, but as
soon as a work is placed in a museum it acquires the mystery of a way of life which
excludes the mass.)
Let me be clear. Painting and sculpture as we know them are not dying of any stylistic
disease, of anything diagnosed by the professionally horrified as cultural decadence;
they are dying because, in the world as it is, no work of art can survive and not become
a valuable property. And this implies the death of painting and sculpture because
property, as once it was not, is now inevitably opposed to all other values. People
believe in property, but in essence they only believe in the illusion of protection which
property gives. All works of fine art, whatever their content, whatever the sensibility of
an individual spectator, must now be reckoned as no more than props for the
confidence of the world spirit of conservatism.
By their nature, photographs have little or no property value because they have no
rarity value. The very principle of photography is that the resulting image is not unique,
but on the contrary infinitely reproducible. Thus, in twentieth‐century terms,
photographs are records of things seen. Let us consider them no closer to works of art
than cardiograms. We shall then be freer of illusions. Our mistake has been to
categorize things as art by considering certain phases of the process of creation. But
logically this can make all man‐made objects art. It is more useful to categorize art by
what has become its social function. It functions as property. Accordingly, photographs
are mostly outside the category.
Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A
photograph is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this
particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything there existed were
continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless. A
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photograph celebrates neither the event itself nor the faculty of sight in itself. A
photograph is already a message about the event it records. The urgency of this
message is not entirely dependent on the urgency of the event but neither can it be
entirely independent from it. At its simplest the message, decoded, means: I have
decided that seeing this is worth recording.

This is equally true of very memorable photographs and the most banal snapshots.
What distinguishes the one from the other is the degree to which the photograph
explains the message, the degree to which the photograph makes the photographer's
decision transparent and comprehensible. Thus we come to little‐understood paradox
of the photograph. The photograph is an automatic record through the mediation of
light of a given event: yet it uses the given event to explain its recording. Photography is
the process of rendering observation self‐conscious.
We must rid ourselves of a confusion brought about by continually comparing
photography with the fine arts. Every handbook on photography talks about
composition. The good photograph is the well‐composed one. Yet this is true only in so
far as we think of photographic images imitating painted ones. Painting, is an art of
arrangement: therefore it is reasonable to demand that there is some kind of order in
what is arranged. Every relation between forms in a painting is to some degree
adaptable to the painter's purpose. This is not the case with photography. (Unless we
include those absurd studio works in which the photographer arranges every detail of
his subject before he takes the picture.) Composition in the profound, formative sense
of the word cannot enter into photography.
The formal arrangement of a photograph explains nothing. The events portrayed are in
themselves mysterious or explicable according to the spectator's knowledge of them
prior to his seeing the photograph. What then gives the photograph as photograph
meaning? What makes its minimal message ‐I have decided that seeing this is worth
recording‐ large and vibrant?
The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form,
but with time. One might argue that photography is as close to music as to painting. I
have said that a photograph bears witness to a human choice being exercised. This
choice is not between photographing x and y: but between photographing at x moment
or at y moment. The objects recorded in any photograph (from the most effective to the
most commonplace) carry approximately the same weight, the same conviction. What
varies is the intensity with which we are made aware of the poles of absence and
presence. Between these two poles photography finds its proper meaning. (The most
popular use of the photograph is as a memento of the absent.)
A photograph, whilst recording what has been seen, always and by its nature refers to
what is not seen. It isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum.
The power of a painting depends upon its internal references. Its reference to the
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natural world beyond the limits of the painted surface is never direct; it deals in
equivalents. Or, to put it another way: painting interprets the world, translating it into
its own language. But photography has no language of its own. One learns to read
photographs as one learns to read footprints or cardiograms. The language in which
photography deals is the language of events. All its references are external to itself.
Hence the continuum.
A movie director can manipulate time as a painter can manipulate the confluence of the
events he depicts. Not so the still photographer. The only decision he can take is as
regards the moment he chooses to isolate. Yet this apparent limitation gives the
photograph its unique power. What it shows invokes what is not shown. One can look at
any photograph to appreciate the truth of this. The immediate relation between what is
present and what is absent is particular to each photograph: it may be that of ice to sun, of grief to a tragedy, of a smile to a pleasure, of a body to love, of a winning race‐horse
to the race it has run.
A photograph is effective when the chosen moment which it records contains a
quantum of truth which is generally applicable, which is as revealing about what is
absent from the photograph as about what is present in it. The nature of this quantum
of truth, and the ways in which it can be discerned, vary greatly. It may be found in an
expression, an action, a juxtaposition, a visual ambiguity, a configuration. Nor can this
truth ever be independent of the spectator. For the man with a Polyfoto of his girl in his
pocket, the quantum of truth in an 'impersonal' photograph must still depend upon the
general categories already in the spectator's mind.
All this may seem close to the old principle of art transforming the particular into the
universal. But photography does not deal in constructs. There is no transforming in
photography. There is only decision, only focus. The minimal message of a photograph
may be less simple than we first thought. Instead of it being: I have decided that seeing
this is worth recording, we may now decode it as: The degree to which I believe this is
worth looking at can be judged by all that I am willingly not showing because it is
contained within it.
Why complicate in this way an experience which we have many times every day ‐the
experience of looking at a photo‐ experience is wasteful and confusing. We think of
photographs as works of art, as evidence of a particular truth, as likenesses as news
items. Every photograph is in fact a means of testing, confirming and constructing a
total view of reality. Hence the crucial role of photography in ideological struggle. Hence
the necessity of our understanding a weapon which we can use and which can be used
against us.


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PERSOONLIJKE BEMERKINGEN:

De passages of sleutelwoorden die ik in deze tekst interessant of opmerkelijk vind, heb ik in blauwe kleur aangeduid. Kerngedachten die nadere aandacht verdienen, vind ik onder meer:

1. de functie van de fotografische 'compositie' en bepaalde soorten van fotografie als (noodzakelijke/minderwaardige) imitator en imitatie van schilderkunst als originele creator van nieuwe en unieke vormen.

2. de functie van de tijd als wezenlijk kenmerk en functie van een foto.

3. de (onzichtbare) relatie tussen wat in een foto als momentopname van een werkelijkheid visueel aanwezig is en wat buiten dit moment (vlak ervoor en erna of meer gespreid in de tijd dan wel 'buiten' de tijd als fysische of psychologische dimensie ) visueel niet (meer) waarneembaar is.

4. de functie van de 'kijker' als mentaal 'waarnemer' (interpretator) en de relatie met de potentiële 'suggestieve' (informerende/desinformerende/manupulerende/illusionaire/imaginaire/verbeeldende...) kracht van een foto.


Deze 4 puntjes uit deze 'kleine tekst' lijken me ankerpunten te zijn in het herkennnen, doorgronden en begrijpen van het wezen en de maatschappelijke functies van het medium fotografie en dus ook van fotografen (en van niet-fotografen), waarop ik later zeker nog terugkom en die ongetwijfeld ook opduiken als kernpunten in de filosofische beschouwingen over 'fotografie' van auteurs zoals, onder meer, Susan Sontag en Roland Barthes.



JOHN BERGER is een interessant en veelzijdig mens, als schrijver-filosoof-ideoloog-kunstcriticus-schilder-etcetera...

Via google vindt U hieromtrent desgewenst diverse aankopingspunten.

Een bekend en interessant boek van Berger over schilderkunst en beeldcultuur heet "WAYS OF SEEING", waarover door BBC ook een tv reeks werd gemaakt.

U kan de 4 episodes van telkens 4 deeltjes van de BBC tv reeks WAYS OF SEEING, geplaatst op youtube, op een practische wijze desgewenst bekijken vanaf DEZE BLOG die bovendien ook een zeer gevarieerde blog is, met de meest verscheiden onderwerpen om naar smaak en goesting vrijelijk in te grasduinen, onder meer in het item "photography".