Images and Reality
September 23, 2010
“It is not reality that photographs make immediately accessible, but images.” – Susan Sontag
A photograph creates a duplication of an image that once represented reality. It proves that at a single point in time, light bounced off an object or scene and struck the film of a camera. Without the camera, that particular photograph does not exist – but the image does.
Before a photograph is taken – before light, object, and film react – what is there? A photograph is the “coincidental” meeting of light traveling from a source, bouncing off an object, and oxidizing crystals on a momentarily exposed surface – the “image” captured will never exist again. An image exists the moment before and the moment after a photograph’s conception, but the image – the one captured on the film of a negative – exists only for an instant. In fact by time the light has reached the surface of the film, its referential image has ceased to exist.
As a constant stream of light hits an object, it emits a constant stream of images. These images are themselves representations of reality, and more specifically they represent only visually. Other senses – smell, taste, touch, etc. – combine with conscious and subconscious elements to create the reality of our lives. Photographs are representations of the images emitted by light hitting (and bouncing off of) objects (reality). Photographs are representations of images.
What does this mean for us? On one hand, it is cautionary – a photograph tells the visual story of a once-present reality. It is easy to accept photographs as perfect representations of the present reality, when in fact they are imperfect and their exact referent no longer exists. On the other hand, this idea highlights the transience of images. If objects emit a continuous stream of images, and our cameras (for obvious logistical reasons) cannot capture all of them, then the only way to experience them is with our eyes. Every object becomes somehow animate.
(As I sit now and stare at my coffee, I nearly expect it to change visually on its own; more accurately I am aware of the images it will when I am not here.)
TMW
