history of photography

basic principles

apllications in archaeology

critique - visual ideology

critique of the observer

photo as evidence

theory - place, evidence, source, mediation

proposition - being toughtful

medition - visualition - photography

instrumentality

the ineffab;e being sensitive to the image - surface, image quality sensitizing the class to different qualities of image

not just how but why - what the features of the image are (cf Pye)

digital under mediation

discourse

science studies

a gallery of photowork across the archaeological

archaeology and photography belong together becasue archaeology extends beyond the discipline

the connection implies an historical perspective

and an interdisciplinary one

aim - thoughtful practice - overarchaing aim of the Archaeology program

rhetoric of the image

- Baryhes - science studies

visualization and science

(get papers from Ashish and Chris)

inclusion of anthropology is to signal a close relationship between the human sciences and modernity and embodied in techniques and instrumentalities such as photography

relationship between visualization and technologies of reproduction

also signals a relatively new interest in the ethnography of the archaeological process (not just archaeological method nb)

again here a relationship with science studies and discourse perspectives

visual anthropology - not part of the course - but will deal with the ethnography of the archaeological

two way relationship - arch and photography

archaeology can shed light on photography

three components - site, collection and the artifact, process and ethnography of the encounter with the past

role of the viewer in photography

classic works

Barthes

Berger

Sontag

Benjamin

Crary

archaeology and photography/illustration -

Dorrell

Piggott

Moser

Molyneaux

new Getty book

science studies

the archaeologicall process

Hodder

Catal Volume

media studies

digital issues

gallery

to raise issues

theme - the document, record, archive

Derrida - archive fever

Bowker

MS - resources

blogs etc

theme - the thing as a gathering

photography and the resord

origins of recording conventions - plan, elevation, section

the relationship of these paradigms to optics and geometry

photography - origins in optics, the fixing of the image only comes late - Hockney and Vermeer and Alpers

photography therefore as part of a long running paradigm of relationship with site, building and artifact - architecture

the darkened room, the lens and box, the concave mirror, the frame and grid

all ,part of the building of worlds (links here with VR)

questioning the notion of signal and noise in the notion that the photograph is a re-presentation (with values of clarity, accuracy etc)

cleaning up and clearing away the irrelevant

instead it is work of building a mediating relationship, a mode of engagement, process rather than product

within which noise actually contitutes the experience of the engagement

cf Schnapp for elements of the photographic relationship in the chorographic, topographic and architectural traditions

noise is essential as that which you are not meant to notoce and which therefore contains the possibility of an alternative view

more NOTES

taking a materialist view

of photowork, materiality of the image, the instrumentality

modes of engagement - the stereo viewer, the daguerreotype case, the album, the exhibition print, the book plate, the newspaper image, the iPhoto slideshow

analog v digital workflow

the innovation of photoshop - translating image into data matrix

the narratives of image construction digital - light and image sensors analog - a more mystical process (no immediate review) - more auratic

translation - here and now into there and then, event into analog surface, into digital data matrix

analog - the aura of the vestige

digital - the vector of account

NB history of photography as a history of radically different modes of engagement

relevance of Bowker to this and Gombrich - schemata paradigms

the camera a space/container within which things occur and are experienced involving a frame the outside a viewer on the inside and certain temporalities - fleeting moments, actualities a clock to regulate this and devices to regulate the frame

the camera as room

modes of engagement - are scenarios, site specific assemblages, conjunctions stage windows, frames instruments props actors

discourse - ask - what makes photowork possible? schemata, archives, art worlds (Becker), standards, genealogy (history)

narrative implicated within and beyond the image the photostory, the complex image (Winogrand), the snatched moment (in some way significant) - distinguish this from Cartier Bresson's aesthetic moment of precise framing and composition

genealogy notions of snatched fleeting moment (Hockney) optics geometry navigational geometry clocks

fixing - from the artists hand to chemistry

mode of engagement = context of composition and production - conjunction, assemblage mise en scène paradigmatic and syntagmatic association context eg album, lecture juxtaposition sequence of operations

workflow

lens, viewfinder, film, aperture etc framing exposure development review, edit publish reception

other features - see eigenvectors - resolution, persistence, etc

agency - in mise en scène, framing, edit, association

Photoshop shifts the workflow and values on the eigenvectors - but all images have been so manipulated

person - instrument - photo has always been a heterogeneous assemblage

haptics etc in the handling of cameras, viewfinder, tripod, degree of deliberation, variables, future orientation

information - resolution - sharpness think in terms of information theory - noise, signal strength, entropy, degradation

lens blur and correction as an issue of noise and signal

bUT noise is a condition of engagement it constitutes the engagement in the settlement of ratio of noise to signal noise is therefore the ambient condition of experience, perception and the character of both - belles noiseuses

how does mode of engagement help us think of photography in archaeology?

think then of archaeological photography

it constitutes and is constituted by certain archaeological relationships

actuality agency in clearing, cleaning, recording making clear and eliminating noise laminar moments of stopping, assessing, cleaning

this is an anti-forensic moment - for noise is the key component of the scene of crime - it must not be disturbed and tidied up

so archaeological site photography actually establishes what kind of relationship the archaeologist has with site and artifact, the circumstances of the encounter

the photograph gives evidence of staging, of sense made of the noise - the photograph confirms archaeological agency, historicity, negative entropy

the characters in modes of engagement

the explorer

the museologist

the collector

the connoisseur

the traveler

the architect (section, elevation, plan)

the scenographer/cinematographer - lighting and arrangement

the developer

the intelligence officer - enumerating with precision

the engineer - flows and masses

in these different engagements, there is no single photographic "gaze"

cameras - and black boxing - standardization came very soon and has changed little

the use of photography in archaeology

not as evidence but as

• aides memoires, notes, reminders

• lecture slides, AV aides

• rhetorical devices - arguments for skill