Photographic image in the context of organology
October 3, 2023
For centuries, the possibility of visually capturing a view or a moment has been left to the handmade fine art. Conveniently, with the acceleration of time during the Industrial Revolution, and thanks to it, came a new way of recording - photography, whose technical apparatus was several decades in the making, and later film. This reduced the duration of the recording of a look or a moment to that of the look or moment itself, i.e., real-time recording. The ratio of the duration of the recording to the recorded is thus reduced from, for example, 100:1 to 1:1. This was not commonplace; in the very early days of photography, exposures lasted several hours, and were more akin to the characteristics of a drawing. Not only in its duration, but also in its form. The development of photography brought many possible uses and became a basic prerequisite for thinking about photography and the photographic image in terms of Bernard Stiegler's general organology.[1] In fact, neither photography nor film is really a record of 1:1 duration, because the shutter time of a camera always has a duration, even if it is 1/16000th of a second, whereas a moment may not have any duration, it rather takes place in a time continuum and its defined duration is always arbitrary. But the point is that the ratio seems like 1:1 to us, and therefore photography can become an extension of our senses. Or even an external functionality connected to our senses. After all, the word photography comes from the Greek words fōtos (φωτός) and grafé (γραφή), which mean light and drawing, i.e. "drawing with light". And, in essence, literally drawing at the speed of light, which is captured for the duration of the exposure onto a photochemical material by a chemical reaction or onto a sensor by a photoelectric process. The speed of drawing with light is of course faster than the speed of drawing by hand. The manual work is shifted from the act of capturing itself to the preparation of the technical apparatus, which then performs the act by mechanical or chemical means, making use of natural energy (solar, fossil, etc.). This makes the task more efficient not only in the relationship between human energy input -> time of execution, but also in the relationship between human energy input -> precision of execution. This is, of course, the dynamic at work in human progress in general and during the industrial revolution in particular.
The fact that the duration of the recording seems (or may seem) to correspond to the duration of the recorded does not mean that our senses and perceptions are equal to the photographic image in this respect. Both have something extra, and this is the second prerequisite for thinking about the photographic image in an organological way. Without this, it wouldn't even make sense to invent the photographic image because it couldn't work as a useful external functional tool. What the photographic image in particular has in addition is precisely the recording or memory function. This is quite limited in our internal functionality of the eye and the image subsequently processed by the brain. Even people who have so-called photographic memory cannot achieve the level of information retention that a photographic image can. This is followed by the possibility of parallelism and insertion of gaze that a recorded (externalized) photographic image brings. It allows us to insert other images into our world, and into them other and others. An example of this is a photograph of a street on which hangs a travel agency advertising poster, on which is a photograph of a person looking at a photograph of an exotic landscape. That's an insertion. If we hold such a photograph of a street in our hands and yet see this or another poster with a photograph hanging next to it in reality, this is a parallelism. Parallelism and insertion have always existed (see Velasquez's painting Las Meninas), but they have never offered the possibility of views recorded in near real time and with such a high degree of information retention. Two main functions of photography emerge here: recording and preservation.
With the advent of photography came an epistemological breakthrough that changed humanity's view of reality, but also of history (recording and preservation). One of the first purposes for which photography was used was to take portraits. This has transformed our historical awareness because we feel we know what the people whose photographs have survived looked like, as opposed to people whose likeness has only survived in artistic depiction or even just verbal description. In this regard, the importance of Stiegler's epiphylogenetic memory and tertiary retention, which involves externalization to media (external organs) that preserve pieces of information, or memes, across generations, becomes apparent. This type of memory bridges the classical types of ontogenetic memory of the individual - Husserl's primary and secondary retention - and phylogenetic and epigenetic memory, which consist in the inheritance of genetic memes and somatic memory. These classical memory dimensions not only transmit information in society, where there is no externalization (recording) and retention of this externalization, but they transmit it in individual animal species, where, apart from genetic information and instincts, there is no longer reaching transmission of information and retention of memory than between two generations. Once information falls out of the memory of one generation, it does not reach the next. This is prevented by human externalization, because it is all too possible to preserve information that is only received by individuals several generations down the line. Photography (and film) fulfils exactly such a role. They record and preserve across generations, since the first half of the 19th century.
Before the ability to record and preserve photographically, the main tool for this was language and text - externalization through writing. But the photographic image was a turning point in that, although it came second as an externalizing medium, it is naturally primary for humans, since humans in their evolution saw before they wrote or even spoke in a coherent language system. Sight perception is primary; even externalized text is perceived by sight, but the text takes on a semiotic intermediate layer of signification, and so its meaning is not in what is seen. The photographic image transcends this interlayer, and thus allows for a more immediate transmission of information. It also offers much more information in the same amount of recording time than handmade fine art or text, thanks to its accelerated and automated recording ratio. However, if we disregard information per se, photography functions similarly to text or painting in that, in addition to externalized capturing, it also allows for artistic expression that, because of its subjective nature, does not operate solely within a temporal duration. In this respect, photography is simply a different medium, which also makes it significantly different from text or handmade fine art in the nature of what is recorded, preserved and expressed. Technology plays a greater role in the process of creation than does signification (at least until the advent of art and conceptual photography). By skipping the intermediate layer of signification, the photographic image is a reflection of reality, not a reflection of a sign translation of reality. This is precisely because photographs are recorded rays of light.
During the Industrial Revolution, the world began to figuratively shrink by reducing the time it took to travel between places. With each successive invention of movement of people or information, the world got smaller until the advent of the internet. We can say that it was shrinking because it was also accelerating, according to the basic formula distance = speed × time. Equal time but higher speed allows us to cover greater distances - so in equal stretches of time, distance gets shorter. In addition to the inventions related to physical motion, the invention of photography and film contributed to the acceleration of time precisely because of their epiphylogetic memory function, which allows us to skip generations and, in this case, the intermediate layers of signification. This is true from an objective point of view. From a subjective point of view, on the other hand, time is sometimes prolonged because we have the condensed information of several generations at our disposal, and the fullness thus extends the time horizon of our perception. But on an objective level, photography is a tool for condensing time into the capsules that photographs are. We can thus achieve the aforementioned simultaneity, even of entire decades, thanks to the photographs taken in those decades and stacked next to each other. On a subjective level, however, time is extended to a potential infinity, if we ignore the materiality of photography. The preservation of the photographed moment is theoretically possible forever. A single moment, lasting for example 1/200th of a second, can be extended to decades thanks to photography.
Even from a purely human point of view, photography has the function of memory. People take pictures of memorable experiences and moments they don't want to forget. Socrates' pharmacological paradox, which Stiegler also discusses,[2]is very clearly manifested in this use. This paradox manifests itself in two ways. Often, precisely because people take a photograph, put it in an album, store it in a cupboard or on a hard drive, they forget because they trust the external organ of the photograph with the memory. This is even more true when we actually need to remember something and it involves specific data, such as an address or a slide presentation. People don't even try to remember these once they have them in the photo. In such cases, they trust the photos 100%. The second aspect is the transfer of momentary perception to an external organ. While people pay attention to the process of recording a moment in a photograph, which makes it easier to (unintentionally) erase the experience from memory, they also miss the experience itself. While the photograph itself removes the intermediate layer of signification and reinforces humanity's epiphylogetic memory, the process of recording it inserts a mediating layer between the person and the experienced moment, which layer obscures epigenetic memory and primary and secondary retention. The second function that photography often performs, made possible by the previous functions of memory, recording and preservation, is that of evidence. Whether it is for truly institutional, forensic or security use or for civic use by ordinary people, photography is seen as evidence of reality. In the age of social media, the ordinary person uses photographs to prove that they have actually been on holiday in an exotic country, had an exceptional meal, seen someone they know, etc. We prove the state of the electricity meter, a job completed, and so on. But along with this use, there has also been a widespread distrust of photography and its unreliability, because even a photograph can be manipulated and faked by a false depiction of reality or a false alteration of a true depiction of reality. People doubt, for example, photographs proving the landing of man on the moon or the roundness of the earth. Here again we see a pharmacological paradox - photography allows for proof, but such use also reinforces skepticism. This effect has been gradually reinforced by the advent of digital technologies, the ability to "photoshop", deepfake technologies and, not least, AI technologies that allow generating of photo-realistic images. This, of course, complicates the practical position of photography in recording, preserving, remembering and proving, but it does not change the original principles attached to real photography.
An AI-generated image, which with its photo-realism, attempts to mimic the original photographic functions of recording and preservation, and in doing so, also pretends to have an evidential function.
[1] Bernard Stiegler. (2020). Elements for a General Organology. Derrida Today. 13. 72-94. 10.3366/drt.2020.0220.
[2] Bernard Stiegler. (2020). Elements for a General Organology.