EXERCISE- TRANSPARENT PICTURES: ON THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHIC REALISM

Read the first three sections (pp.1–8) of the essay ‘Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism’ by Kendall L Walton. Core resources: Walton_TransparentPictures.pdf Write a 200-word reflective commentary in your learning log outlining your views about Walton’s idea of photographic transparency (Open College of the Arts, 2014:20)

These are my notes from my reading:

• Photography is thought to excel in being realistic. Evidenced by the use of photographs as evidence in courts, their use as evidence for extortion.
• Photographs have an immediacy.
• Edward Steichen amongst others said that photographs can be confusing, manipulated, subjective and falsified.
• Walter suggests that they are realistic in terms of perspective, portrayal of detail and capturing the ordinary, but are they just more of what pictures possess and not so special in their realism? He says it’s not that photographs ae different but that they are just more realistic, and that is only if they aren’t blurred etc.
• Andre Bazin believes there is a deeper gap between photographs and other types of pictures saying that “the photographic image is the object itself”.
• Walton asserts that it is impossible that a photograph of something can “be” something as you can’t mistake a photograph of something flat but that there is a difference between photographs and pictures, in that a photograph is always a photograph of something that exists.
• Walton asserts that photography is a “supremely realistic medium” and a “contribution to the enterprise of seeing” that can extend our vision and see things literally. The viewer “sees literally, the scene that was photographed. Whereas painting merely represent something.
• Walton says that photographs are pictures through which we see the world and the photographed objects.

My reflections on Walton’s idea:

I have read the first three sections of this essay it is a conceptual and thought provoking article. I understand that although Walton believes that photography is a realistic medium this is actually in comparison to other methods of representation. Walton’s case for the realism of photography rests on his assertion that photographs are always of something that actually exists.

What particularly interests me about his ideas is that of photography as a way of showing and seeing rather than just representing. I was fascinated with his description of photography as similar to seeing through telescopes, mirrors and microscopes as a way of enhancing and opening up the visual world; so in essence we actually see the world through the photograph.

Reference:

Open College of the Arts (2014) Photography 2: Documentary-Fact and Fiction (Course Manual). Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

TRANSPARENT PICTURES: ON THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHIC REALISM Kendall L. Walton at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ee67/2102ee7067ed4260970cb018b0fa0f1e4988.pdf?_ga=2.126331661.1648460048.1581616969-2070965404.1581616969 Accessed 13.2.20

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