61
'SOMETHING ABOUT
PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY'
A REVIEW BY
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VICTOR BURGIN
I've been asked to 'say something about photo- ly practiced, is concerned not with explanations
graphy theory'. My remarks this evening1 are but with value-judgements. To support his or
produced out of and into the context of photo- her judgements the critic characteristically ad-
graphy education. vances arguments which when examined rarely
We're here to talk about theory. Many people prove to be arguments, properly speaking, but
are against it. Theory gets in the way of spontan- rather assertions of opinions paraded as if their
eity. Theory is a realm of bloodless abstractions authority was unquestionable. Critical discourse
which have nothing to do with the cut-and-thrust tends to be studded with such untheorised items
of practice. For us, however, there is no state of of common sense as 'greatness', 'originality',
Edenic innocence outside of theories. If we were 'spirituality', and so on, most of which can be
ever in such a state, we lost it long ago when we traced to humanist doctrines which emerged in
learned to speak. If you can understand what I'm the West in the transition from Medieval to Ren-
saying then your views of the world, whatever aissance ways of thinking; to the liberal indiv-
they may be, rest on a foundation of mainly tacit, idualism which emerged in the seventeenth
unspoken, assumptions which make up the inter- century, notably in the writings of the British
locking complex of theories we know as philosopher John Locke; to the romanticism of
'common sense'. As for spontaneity, Pascal asked the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centur-
the question: 'Who knows but that second ies; and so on. Upon a foundation of romantic
nature is not merely first habit?' liberal-humanism there is most often then erect-
All discourses rest on assumptions which ed a formalist aesthetics derived, generally via
imply theories about the way things are. All dis- Greenberg, from the English Bloomsbury
courses are 'theoretical', the discourses we call Edwardians Clive Bell and Roger Fry; or the
theoretical are self-consciously so. Theory sets derivation may be fin-de-siecle symbolism; or
out to question the underlying assumptions of nineteenth century realism; or an amalgam of a
common sense in order to replace them, where number of these theories. The implicit politics of
necessary, with better-founded, or more compre- such forms of criticism tends most often to be
hensive, explanations. In this it distinguishes derived from Mathew Arnold: with the decline
itself from criticism. Criticism, as most common- of religion only art can provide the spiritual
cement which will keep the crumbling edifice of
1
The School of Communication of Ryerson the status quo society from collapsing. My point
Polytechnical Institute, Toronto, is in the process of in making these generalisations is simply this:
introducing courses in the theory of photography into the assumptions operative within criticism are
its syllabus. Ryerson invited four speakers-Victor theoretical, and they have a history. Both of
Burgin, Hollis Frampton, Allan Sekula, and Joel these facts are suppressed within criticism, where
Snyder-to give public talks on the topic, 'Theory of
Photography'; the talks were followed by a panel dis- the critic speaks as if the criteria being applied
cussion. What follows is a transcript of Victor were unquestionably self-evident, timeless laws
Burgin's contribution, given on September 30, 1983. of nature.
62 A second discursive regime overlaps and inter- specific object. But there is a complication,
weaves with criticism: this is 'history'. Whereas, theories don't simply find their object, sitting
in the school, the setting of criticism tends to be waiting for them in the world, theories also con-
the studio, the setting of history is the lecture stitute that object. It seems reasonable to assume
theatre. In fact, criticism and the history of that the object of photography theory is, at base,
photography are in a symbiotic relationship-the the photograph. But what is a photograph"?
one could not survive without the other. The dis- When photography first emerged into the
course of criticism throws up its subjects and context of nineteenth-century aesthetics, it was
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objects of value, 'great' photographers and initially taken to be an automatic record of a real-
photographs, which it is then the business of ity, then it was quickly contested that it was the
history to arrange into meaningful narrative expression of an individual, and then a consensus
sequence. That this narrative is overwhelmingly was arrived at which perhaps has the strongest
one of linear descent, ofpatrimony, should alert support today: a photograph is a record of a real-
us to the fact that, psychologically, like all good ity refracted through a sensibility. Put another
narratives, history is conceived in Oedipal terms. way: what I see is something seen the way some-
From a sociological point of view, it is the one else saw it. I put it this way to bring out the
function of history to legitimate careers and emphasis on seeing: 'photography is a visual med-
commodities-history-writing as underwriting. ium'. This is certainly where complementary
In the history of photography we find the studies overwhelmingly located theory-in
unargued assumptions of criticism projected into theories of vision: the philosophy, psychology,
the past in order that they might return miracu- and physiology of perception. We learned from
lously transmogrified into the indisputable 'facts' these theories that a photograph does not repli-
of history. There are, of course, exceptions-I'm cate our act of perception, nor does our act of
talking about what is normal. perception replicate the world 'as it is' (although
A third discursive regime, in the art and photo- what was meant here was never quite clear; I'll
graphy educational institution, most often found come back to this).
playing gooseberry to the love-affair between There are two main objections to conceiving of
criticism and history, is what has alternatively the theory of photography as a branch of cognit-
been called 'liberal' or 'complementary' studies. ive psychology, either in this brute sense or in a
Liberal studies means just that-you study to be more mediated sense-for example, by analogy
a liberal. Casting my mind back to my art-school with the psychologically informed theory of art
days: this week a bio-chemist shows slides of put forward by Ernst Gombrich in Art and
crystalline structures which may excite the paint- Illusion. In the first place, such theories of
ers and fabric-designers to a fever of creativity; perception have nothing to say about the social
next week an evangelical existentialist will world from which and into which photographs
convince us of our inherent capacity to forge the are produced. Secondly, the spectator-photo-
world according to our own life-project, all 50 of grapher, or member of the audience for photo-
us. 'Complementary studies', when I was at art graphs-the spectator assumed by such theories
school, was liberal studies with a pedagogic cons- is itself an entity outside of society and history.
cience-an attempt to offer courses which were Essentially, the spectating subject of such
truly complementary to the field of study in theories is a disembodied eye, albeit an eye
question. It is here that there occured the first connected to complex neurological/psychological
stirrings of theory in the art and photography circuits. The subject of such theories is without
education syllabus, and it is here that the gender, race, class, age, or affectional prefer-
question arises, 'What theory is complementary ences. Not to be able to talk about such things
to pTiotography?' within the theory of photography would be a dis-
Basically, theories may be distinguished one advantage. Clearly, we should not criticise a
from another according to either their method or theory for failing to do what it never set out to
their object. I'll leave the question of method on do in the first place; equally clearly, theories of
one side for the moment; I'll come to it later. perception do not get us very far in our under-
Most immediately, I think we would all be incl- standing of photography in its various uses. I
ined to say, photography theory has its own suspect it is this very limitation erf" theories of
perception which allowed them a virtual perspective entailed by a rejection of the subject/ 63
hegemony within complementary studies in art object epistemology, particularly, the abstract
and photography education-the fact that there is model in which the perceiving subject compares
nothing in the theory which actually contradicts a reality with its representation:
the tenets of dominant history and criticism. One of the most influential achievements of the
One response to the ubiquitous tendency women's movement, in the field of cultural
within the 'Fine Art' tradition to bracket out theory, has been its insistence on the extent to
considerations of history and ideology in order to
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which the collusion of women in their own
create a pure category, 'Art', which somehow oppression has been exacted through represent-
gives birth to itself 'apart from', 'in spite of, ations. Feminist theorists argued that the pre-
'above' lived social relations, has been to turn to dominant visual and verbal representations of
sociological theories, particularly those based in women in circulation in our male-dominated
the Marxist tradition. Marxist history and socio- society do not reflect, re-present, a biologically
logy seeks to restore the missing accounts of such given 'feminine nature', natural and therefore
things as the social and historical context of the unchangeable. They argued that what women
images in question; the conditions of work, econ- have to adapt to as their femininity, particularly
omic dependencies, and ideological affiliations of in the process of growing up, is itself a product of
those who produce and consume such images. representations. The question to be asked,
The spectating subject is now no longer simply therefore, in looking at, say, an advertising image
an eye, the eye now belongs to a labouring body. of a woman-or, of course, a man-the question
This has been, and will continue to be, necessary should not be, 'Is this a true representation of a
work; however, when it claims to be both woman, or of a man?', but rather, .'What are the
necessary and sufficient it is seriously disadvan- effects of this image likely to be?' I'm reminded
taged by the legacy of an inadequate theory of of Godard's remark: 'Ce n'est pas une image
ideology. Perception theories posit a simply juste, c'est juste une image'-but of course it's
given entity, the world of appearances, the realm never 'just an image', the image always means
of 'the visual', which is then inflected and something, and it's in accordance with such
nuanced in its passage through the image. A meanings that people live and act.
certain predominant form of Marxist analysis This observation brings me to what I believe is
posits a simply given entity, the world of econ- the most important feature of the phenomenon of
omic productive relations, the realm of 'the the photograph in society: photographs mean.
social', which is then inflected and nuanced-in a The various forms of photographic practice con-
famous formulation, 'inverted'-in its passage tribute to the production, reproduction, dissem-
through ideology. The abstract model in the ination, of the everyday meanings within the
otherwise incompatible approaches is the same: framework of which we act. I believe this fact is
there is something concrete 'out there' which fundamental; we should not lose sight of it when
precedes representations, and against which the we attend to other aspects of photograph-the
representations may be tested for their degree of photograph as a picture, or as a token in a system
correspondence to, or deviation from, the real. of economic exchange, or whatever. The idea of
At its most reductive, this has allowed a certain photography as something used to engender
type of Marxist sociologism to assign images to a meanings has of course been with us as long as
bipartisan form of classification in terms of their the notion, particularly prevalent during the
affiliation either to capital or labour, fostering heyday of the picture-magazine, that photo-
that illusion of 'left' photographers that there is graphy is a language. However, although it had
such a thing as a 'political' photograph-'social- long been common for people to refer to 'the
ism in one image'. In rejecting, here, a certain language of photography', it was not until the late
simplistic form of Marxist theory I do no 1950s to mid-60s that there was any real interro-
more than repeat arguments which have emerged gation of the supposed analogy between 'natural
over recent years from within Marxist cultural language'-speech and writing-and signifying
studies: the only world we can know is a world systems other than language, systems like
which is always already represented. Let me give a photography. These early investigations,
concrete example of the sort of shift in critical conducted using the tools of linguistic analysis,
i
64 demonstrated that there is in fact no 'language of By the early 1970s semiology had undergone a
photography' as such, no singular, unique, radical transformation from within, in the course
system of signification upon which all photo- of which the linguistic model became displaced
graphs depend, in the sense in which all within a broader complex of mythologies-most
sentences in English depend on the English lang- notably those of Freudian and Lacanian psycho-
uage. It was argued that there is rather a hetero- analysis. In this second revolution in tfieory, all
geneous collection of codes upon which photo- the more surprising in itself, emphasis was shift-
graphy may draw, but very few of which can be ed, as the title of one of Barthes' essays from this
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said to be unique to photography. For example, period puts it, 'From Work to Text'. In structur-
all photographers know that the way they light a alist semiology the particular object of analysis
face for portraiture can'say'something-rug- (novel, photograph, or whatever) was conceived
gedness, spirituality, weirdness, or whatever of as a self-contained entity, a 'work', whose
-but such lighting codes can be seen at work in capacity to mean was nevertheless dependent
painting, or in the theatre, long before they are upon underlying formal 'structures' common to
used in photography. The type of analysis I'm all such works-the task of theory was to uncover
talking about, conducted from the standpoint of and describe these structures. This approach
linguistics, is of course the type we know as semi- provided what we might call an 'anatomy' of
obgy. The main gain of semiological analysis was meaning production; however, as an 'anatomical'
in its deconstruction of the apparent 'natural- science, it was unable to say anything about the
ness' of the meanings produced when we look at constantly changing 'flesh' of meaning. Text, as
photographs. We might remember that much of conceived of by Barthes (with the prompting of,
this work, in its earlier phases-I'm thinking par- most notably, Jacques Derrida and Julia
ticularly of the early Barthes, of Mythologies - Kristeva), is seen not as an 'object' but rather as
much of this work was conceived of as a 'semio- a 'space' between the object and the reader/view-
clasm', a breaking of images, of Marxist inspir- e r - a space made up of endlessly proliferating
ation; which is to say it was conceived of as a meanings which have no stable point of origin,
work of 'demystification'- ironic, considering nor of closure. In the concept of'text' the
how mystified most people are when they first boundaries which enclosed the 'work' are dissol-
encounter the semiological texts. ved; the text opens continually into other texts,
Semiology came under theoretical attack, how- the space ofintertextuality.
ever, on this issue of the spectating subject For example, there's recently been in circula-
implied by the theory. In semiology the subject tion, in England, an advertisement which shows
is little other than an encoding/decoding a bottle of Vermouth and, standing in front of it,
machine: we still have a problem using the a glass slipper containing some ice-cubes and a
theory to connect the photograph to those factors measure of the drink. Well, instantly, when I
like class, race, age, sex, which are so important look at this image, I'm referred to the story of
to us all. Another, allied, problem stemmed from Cinderella and its themes of rags-to-riches and
the sort of linguistics being used-all the encod- romantic love, which in their turn can potentially
ing/decoding machines work the same way and hook into specific contents in my own personal
understand the messages in the same way. If I history. I'm also referred to the idea of 'drinking
send you a lump of cheese in a wrapper, it from a slipper', the image of fin-de-siecle playboys
remains just that when you receive it; but if I and chorus-girls, and all this image may evoke in
send you a meaning in a photograph... ? Actual- terms of physical sexuality. As a European of a
ly, I've just been reminded of Mao's remark certain age I'm reminded of the expression, 'on
about the pear: to know the taste of the.pear you the rocks', which evokes film noir detectives in
have to change the pear by eating it. OK, forget belted trench-coats sipping bourbon in piano-
the analogies, the point is that we can't leave our bars; and so it goes on. All of these associations,
sex, age, class, etc., out of consideration in trying and more, belong to the fields of what Barthes
to understand the way meanings are produced. calls the 'deja-lu': everything we already know
The question then became, 'how is our subjectiv- and which the image may therefore evoke,
ity involved in producing meaning when we're whether by intention or not. These intertextual
confronted with a text?' fields are themselves, of course, in constant
process of change, they are historically specific. talking as if this history and theory began in the 65
The psychic processes by which any single image nineteenth century. There is, for example, a
can spark an explosion of associations-visual wealth of pertinent history and theory-I'm
and verbal images-are those of the unconscious, speaking now from the point of view of semiotics
what Freud called the 'primary processes'. The - i n the period from, roughly, the sixteenth to
particular trajectories launched through the ever- the eighteenth centuries. I'm thinking of the
shifting intertextual fields skip, stepping-stone debates around the doctrine of tit pictura poesis
fashion, and 'dissolve', along the traces of the which bound all picture-making in the Renais-
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spectator's phantasies/histories. A consequence of sance to considerations of discourse; I'm thinking
this theory, informed by psychoanalysis, has of the tradition of the Emblem and the Impresa,
been to further add to the theoretical model of where we can find so much of interest to more
the spectator: the body not only labours, it also recent, psychoanalytically inspired, theories of
desires. Clearly, then, there can never be any final representation.
closure of the meanings of an image; there can In this almost infinitely extensive field pf poss-
never be any question of arriving at the sum of ible theoretical approaches there is no direction
signification, the parts will never add up to a of work, in the name of photography theory,
non-contradictory whole. One result of'post- which is simply given to us in advance. The
structuralist' theory therefore has been to dem- method(s) we select will depend on our goals -
onstrate the futility of any theology of origins, of what do we want to do with this theory? For my
meanings such as is present in the subject/object own part, I can see no point in doing the work
epistomology, the base/superstructure metaphor, unless I can believe that it matters in some more
and to which structuralism tended to revert in than merely academic sense. I've said I believe
the idea of structure itself. Furthermore, and this that the most salient characteristic of photo-
has important consequences for photography graphy seen in the context of history and society,
theory, the concept of the intertextual generation is the contribution it makes to the (re-)production
of all meaning entails that we cannot theorise the and dissemination of meaning. Since Foucault
production of meaning in photography without we can be in no doubt that the production of
taking into account all other sites of meaning meaning is inseparable from the production of
production within a given culture at a given power. Photography inserts itself into the net-
moment in history. works of what Foucault calls the 'capilliary
In talking about theoretical approaches to action' of power through its contribution to the
photography I've so far mentioned cognitive nexus of desire and representation, which includ-
psychology, sociology, semiology, and psycho- es, for example, the question of who and/or what
analysis. Clearly, photography theory has no is represented and how. Photography theory can
methodology peculiarly its own. Equally clearly, seek to reveal and account for the processes by
the wide range of types of photographic practices ' which this contribution is made. Photography
across a variety of disparate institutions—advert- theory is itself engaged in this process through
ising, amateur art, journalism, etc-means that being now caught up in the apparatus of the
photography theory has an object of its own only educational institution. Caught up internally,
in the very minimal sense that it is concerned where it is a matter of such things as competing
with signifying practices in which still images are discourses within the academic institutions, and
used by an instrumentality more automatic than the accreditation of future 'experts'. And caught
had been previous ways of producing images. up externally, where it is a matter of the relation
This instrumentality, the camera and film, is of the educational institution to the State and
itself in the process of changing, a change accel- other ruling interests.
erating rapidly with the advent of the microchip. Here, we might remember the observation of
Photography theory therefore is not, nor is it that occasional, but influential, writer on
ever destined to be, an autonomous discipline. It photography, Walter Benjamin: even work with
is rather an emphasis within a general history and a radical content may nevertheless serve an
theory of representations. And I should say, even apparatus which can do no other than perpetuate
though I only have time to say it in passing, that the status quo. We should be wary of the capacity
there is absolutely no reason for us to go on of theory within the educational institution to
66 reproduce the authority structures of patriarchy friend he said: 'He was educated as an artist,
in general. In my own teaching I must struggle - which is to say he wasn't really educated at all.'
especially now, in the context of educational 'cut- I'm thinking of that prevailing anti-intellectual-
backs'-with the medieval legacy of the lecture ism which presents itself as liberalism but which
theatre, and with the necessity of imposing a syl- in fact is the masquerade of a petrified conservat-
labus which must be enforced through an ism. I do not know, under the present circum-
oppressive apparatus of examination and accred- stances, what the alternatives can be. I am sure
itation. I do not believe that the alternative to however that, as a teacher, I must be judged for
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this alienating system is the sort of laissez-faire my progress on this front, as well as for the
anarchy I encountered in my days in art schools. elegance of my presentations and the comprehen-
I remember a remark made by the Russian For- siveness of my bibliographies.
malist critic Viktor Shklovskyj speaking of a
European
Cinema
Conference
April 17-19, 1984
To be held at Aston University.
For details of programme,
please contact Dr. Susan
Hayward, Department of
Modern Languages, Aston
University, Gostar Green,
Birmingham 4 7ET.
