Siegfried Kracauer- Photography Zhu Runze Leon (3036075130)

Kracauer’s ‘Photography’ is clustered and packed with ideas that brings many
inspirations and enlightments to me regarding photography and visuality. I found it
hard to swallow within a short time, but I would like to share my immediate insights
after reading it.

Following on an observation that a classmate proposed in the lecture last week, he

described photographs as an evidence of owning a particular space, that is, for
mankind, to exert a sense of ownership as well as control over space and time in a
physically reduced and portable form, or simply an object we can say. For example,
a photograph showing me beside a tourist spot manifests that I have been to that
particular space in a particular time and such place serves as an object or image for
me to consume, or having a visual experience without going to the same spot again.
A visual consumption, a visual feast in my very hand, that can be reviewed several
times at the present, and in the future, of a past event that had happened in history.
This correlates with the very function of photographs, to show the present the past.

However, in my point of view the visual experience offered by photographs varies

over time, that is, within the same photograph depicting a female working in the
factory in the 1900s people in different times tend to result in diversified
interpretations. For instance, people at that time will found the photograph peculiar or
strange whereas nowadays we may declare it as some representations of feminism
or female victory. We are giving meanings, from a historical perspective, to filter
photographs in the past. While in Kracauer’s reading some historicism scholars
pointed out photographs as a collection of history events in a sequential and
chronological manner. They are concerned with the photography of time, history as
temporal in nature. For me, photographs, in fact, is paradoxical in its very function
and separates people from history. This can be applied to the scenario
aforementioned in which I might developed different interpretations regarding the
same photo at different times. Similar to the photograph of the female, such
photographic vision, offers me a glimpse of such “history” but I didn’t even share the
actual visual experience of the event on my own at the time it was produced. Reality
and authenticity of the event, thus the history is questioned. Is photography
equivalent in recording historical events based on reality or truth?

This strikes similar to the example of Grandma in Kracauer’s reading. The Grandma
in the photograph was trapped in that particular spatial and temporal continuum
which held its greatest purpose at the moment it was shot. When it ages, its
immediate reference to the original is no longer possible, it was dead, but perpetuate
and alive at the same time. Just as it was said “The old photograph has been
emptied of the life whose physical presence overlay its merely spatial configuration”
and “The truth content of the original is left behind in its history; the photograph
captures only the residuum that history has discharged”. The truth is, this is a
photograph of Grandma in a beautifully dressed crinoline and exquisite accessories;
but in history, or reality as mentioned in the reading, it is any young girl in 1864, and
grandma in the photograph serves as an archaeological manikin that is used to
illustrate the costumes at that period, it is therefore viewed, from a historical
perspective at the present. The truth and initial function, purpose of the photograph
is buried by the spatial appearance and human figure on the photograph. In my way
of understanding, photographs are ephemeral in nature and its temporal significance
shows a continuous, and inevitable declining trend when time passes.

Kracauer provides a vivid example revealing the difference between art and
photographs on the basis of spatial appearance. He pointed out that art is not
entirely subject to natural necessity whereas a complete turn to natural necessity
would be a perfect creation for photographs. Photographers record events, in details,
without subjectivity, in the form of photographs. It is neutral and excessive. Artists, on
the opposite, paints “history”. It can be interpreted here that history, from the human
perspective, is relatively subjective and selective in nature; history, from a natural
perspective, reveals reality and truth into elements and fragments- what happened is
history, it has no deal with either hiding nor selecting the best fragments to explain a
truth or phenomena in the society. Furthermore, Kracauer explains such relationship
by mentioning that the meaning of the object in the artwork matters on its spatial
appearance whereas in photography the spatial appearance of the object is its
meaning. He pointed out that the two spatial appearances, one by natural and one
by human cognition are not the same. Therefore, it is interesting in a way that
through human cognition on the objectively produced photograph a subjective
meaning and visuality is constructed- photograph being treated as artwork in which
human wish the way they are to be, in order to explain a historical event from a
present perspective, that is a present and critical visuality. This is quite similar to
Barthe’s ‘The death of the author’, where we give our own understanding on a writing
that its original and initial meaning was eradicated at the very point it was created.

Kracauer then explained such ineluctable and predominant way of cognition by the
coordination of memory images in human brain compared to that of photographs.
Memory cannot encompass the entire spatial appearance and temporal course of an
event, it is selective in nature that is full of gaps and lacks continuity. Memory images
are retained and filtered according to its significance and relevance of the image to
people. Therefore, principle of memory organization prioritize important things and
object and they cannot be reduced to merely spatial and temporal forms like
photographs. They are a more opaque and ambiguous collection of monograms that
is not specified on particular dates or place. For example, a memory of my favourite
food is not built up on the date and place I eat it but instead the taste or appearance
of the food. Between photographs and memories lies a huge difference, and
therefore we could not use our way of cognition to explain history in the form of
photographs. As it was said in the reading- “The last memory image outlasts time
because it is forgettable, however photograph remains as clear as possible
throughout time, and must be associated with the moment in time at which it came
into existence”. Memories focus on the truth content, whereas photographs focus on
the truth itself. When a certain historical photograph aligns with the memory content
of a person, such image is recognized, in human way of perception, a truth and
reality. On the contrary, when a photograph violates our memory or established
understanding, we will try to use our way of perception to interpret and give
explanations to it. Hence, photographs are said to be deceptive and deviated from
the truth.

Back to the modern society, another issue of photographic power arises with
increasing reliance on technologies. In the contemporary society, we tend to build up
our knowledge and linkage with the world through photographs on social media
platforms. We are easily influenced, on some sense of a new pictorial turn, due to a
“shrinkage” characteristic of the modern society- to gain convenience and speed in
information dissemination. In the reading, Kracauer is awared of the mass production
of images, describing “this mass of images is so powerful to destroy the potentially
existing awareness of crucial traits”, which in my opinion the crucial trait here refers
to elements in nature that implicits truth. A multiplicity of the original or manmade
images exerts a certain power such as organizing a strike against our understanding,
a visual strike to be clear. Photographs can be used as a political tool that changes
our very mindset of perception and cognition. It is different from the past, where
photographs are used for a more simple and direct purpose. An influx of photographs
also plays as an invasive weapon against the art industry, where artworks can be
captured by photographs and presented to people around the globe, the original
meaning or speciality of artworks disintegrates. Such applies to truth, where
photographs in masses prove more convincing to the original truth itself.
Photography is capable of producing photographs and images that deviates truth.
Hence this is why people nowadays question about the truth presented in
photographs.

Last but not least, Kracauer also describes a turn to photography as a go for broke
game for history, where historical facts and knowledges established may be
challenged and threatened by production of photographs. It is a way of neglection of
natural rules and discplines. Once again Kracauer reiterates the nature of
photographs- it is the general inventory of a nature that cannot be further reduced
into monograms as it is limited by the temporal factor, as mentioned before the
innate meaning of the photograph diminishes with time. It is a spatial inventory.
Meanwhile, historicism’s temporal inventory is limited only to the temporal
succession of events, it gives a linkage between different events but fails to contain
the transparency of the history, that is the spatial elements of objects at different
times. History at Kracauer’s time is therefore merely serves as a way to explain
social order through economic laws of nature, but not to disclose facts or traits of
nature. Our consciousness changes over time, and hence history in my perspective
is an on-going and everlasting process of human consciousness at the present, it is
with human interventions. However, photographs, in Kracauer’s view, “archive
assembles in effigy the last elements of a nature alienated from meaning”, it is
liberated from human cognition and consciousness. At the very end the author offers
a responsibility of photograph by saying that “A consciousness still caught up in
nature is unable to see its own material base. It is the task of photography to
disclose this previously unexamined foundation of nature”.

Hence, I have been thinking since regarding the role and identity of photography, in
the modern society or in the past, or in the nature as a series of on-going and
everlasting process of succession. In addition to its role and identity, a further
question on whether photography have taken changes in its authority and power in
dealing with, or even threatening social functions throughout the decades are also
established.