Photography beyond humans
One of the questions I have been asking myself for the last few years is whether photography can be independent of the human’s use and if yes what is to communicate by itself?
Photography as a tool has been used almost in everything! As a historical document, a capture of the moment, a document of proof, a mean to manipulate, a tool for self-realization and understanding and of course as part of the arts. Although, I wish to think of whether photography can stand by itself and therefore communicate something beyond our intention or our language.
So, to answer my question, I wish to look at what is photography, what is a photograph and what its relationship with the image. Talking from my perspective, and by bringing examples from the world of art.
If photography is a tool made specifically to serve humanity’s needs then without us or a being without vision, it doesn’t exist. But this, even if it sounds like a reasonable fact, we have to agree that it is expressed only from the perspective of the human and not photography itself. After all, it is not a photograph which is limited to our senses; it is us. A Photograph is an image embodied even as a memory, therefore, every picture, as well as everything else that exists, is a moment of space and time.
Now photography, if we avoid looking at it through its most common conceptions or even the etymology of the word, is something beyond our eyes and cameras. It is the air passing through the leaves of a tree. It is the light traveling for billions of years until it reaches earth, it is the hearing of a bird and the reaction to the smell. It is the jolt and the smile of someone teased; it is a reaction towards our society. The capture of an image has for me, no different from one’s reflects and responds to something that exists outside of him.
The approach of capturing an image without the use of a camera is one example of how photography can exist beyond the use of machines that are dependent on our way of seeing. A more clear example of my understanding though can be found in the work of Liz Deschenes. As in addition to many other artists which are using non-camera approaches of making a photographic image, her work isn’t aiming to reach a specific representation form, but it is instead let free to develop itself forever.
At this point, I would like to make clear what separates a painting from a photograph. Of course, those borders are not at all concrete, and our perception of photographing can transform even in sculpture as I will show later. Now, If photography is to react, a painting is a reaction as well. Although we have to consider the fact that in every photographic work and not necessarily in every painting or sculpture we meet the element of a trace. The trace of something which is outside of us and it can’t be controlled entirely by us. For this, I have a particular image that supports my perception of when humans first started to use photography that I will keep for the end, but for now, I am just giving you this:
The body and the content
A photograph will change. This change may sometimes be very slow and hard to be perceived in the life period of a human but it is. It will continue to interact with its environment until it fades away into something new. Digital photography has succeeded to overcome the effects of having a “physical” body but as an information, it will always undergo transformations while being exposed through deferent medium or screens.
An image’s content thought has an even more abstract substance. It is from the beginning so unrelated to what it represents that we have to come up with the understanding of what we see by using memory! That is the deference of an image in addition to a photograph; the image can only exist through our vision. Therefore, it will always consist of a reality closer to the truth as we can only have one aspect of it for every viewer. And by saying the truth I make no distinction between being a lie.
Our eyes in addition to a camera are image painters. Those will perceive a reality based on their function but also in the viewers understanding of his environment. That is I believe the central element of a photograph and where it separates itself from human’s beliefs. A picture can happen by itself in nature, and it is beyond the literal meaning of a record of the light. It is the trace of an existence.
As we can see in the work of Marchel Duchamp “3 Standard Stoppages” he is using gravity to record an action made by anyone and he transports the lines into physical objects as a means to document a physical phenomenon, action or being.
The creation of an image instead of a picture is one of the things that characterizes the nature of a human being more than any other animal. Whether we are talking about a photograph a sculpture or a painting, humans seem more interested to capture the “image” of their own senses and needs, than what they can find outside of them. So even if the camera has the ability to produce a picture completely independent by the human’s beliefs, a human will most of the time choose to keep the images that mostly reflect back to his own self. Something that leads to the manipulation, the inclusion or the exclusion of elements that he finds unrelated or related to his point of view or to his purposes. Of course, this is something that applies to all and it is how a picture reflects someone’s character. The trace of his life as he is responding to his society.
It is an image
In conclusion, photography existed before the human in the form of anything that consists not of a physical being but the trace of it. An element of nature that by using it, we expanded our world of science, art, and politics, as with the use of it we were able to build a world of facts and imagination based on our feelings, senses, and needs.
And if someone continues to insist that photography has to be only a trace of light, then I have no reason to disagree but to remind him that colors and shades are not just light but filtered light. Making everything around us, some kind of a physical photographic plate through which we experience the world. So, at the end of this presentation, I wish to show you my perception of what is the first photograph ever made by and for humans. A picture that for my surprise shows how close was photography and painting all along.
And of course, one would argue that those hands can be called paintings but, the way they are made are directly connected with the way our sun and light works and they are generated with the use of a technology – physics and machines instead of a painting that represents something only through the decision of a human’s notion.