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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