Meaning is Found Outside Recognition

            When Professor Russell arrived at the lecture hall on Friday, November 25^th, I told him that I had sent him an email the night before, but that it had been somewhat of a false alarm, because I’d managed to hand the essay an hour later. He said he’d gotten it and told me not to worry, assuring me that I would not be penalized for being one hour late. That was a relief.

            When he selected the music from his phone that he always plays before class, which is almost always some kind of techno easy-listening songs, I asked if that was what he listened to at home. He said that he does sometimes, but what he tends to do is that if her hears a piece of music that he likes, he selects it and gets Apple to create a channel based on the style and then they stream similar songs. He said it’s almost always something I like. I told him that I hate it when Google shows me things that it thinks I might be interested in based on the spying they’ve already done into my online choices. They pop up stuff on the corners of my screen and then when I look at the news I always see news items they’ve selected based on my interests. He agreed that in that case it’s usually something horrible.

            Our lecture was a continuation of the subject of photography.

            For Bazin, a photograph is a window to the past.

            The thing that is artistically important about photography is its downfall because the artist is removed from the equation. The photograph’s power to be fictional does not come from the photograph itself.

            In his essay, “What’s Special About Photography?” Ted Cohen addresses the representational problem. There are two ways to interpret the correspondence between a photograph and reality. He says that photography is more natural than painting and compares it’s relation to the subject to be like that of a biological child to its parent and a painting is more like an adopted child.

            Someone behind me had opened a take-out container and the smell of overcooked lasagna was permeating the room in a non-appetizing way.

            Cohen’s response to the problem is strange. He doesn’t solve it and concedes that photography is just representationally deficient. Devlin thinks Cohen is missing the point. To temper the problem, photography makes up for it by being cool in other ways.

            He projects some samples of artistically created photographs. There is the view down the centre of a river, including the front of a canoe; a tree with a red sun behind it; a deliberately slightly out of focus shot looking up from the bottom of an autumn tree; and the long exposure from above of the lights from cars snaking along a mountain highway.

            Bazin says that the transparent quality of film makes it special because in order to make it interesting we have to be artistic. Bazin and Cohen are in conflict, while Walton is only talking about photographs being imprints.

            As a response to the argument that photography is mechanical, Cohen quotes a joke by Johan Sebastian Bach, in which he declares that there is nothing remarkable about his keyboard playing. He just hits the right keys at the right time and then the instrument plays itself.  Cohen thinks there is still a problem. It is too easy to be a photographer because everyone has a camera in their phone. It is always ready to pull it out, point, shoot and post. Remember that high art is produced by a skillful, creative mind in a non-formulaic way.

            He showed a selection of photos that he’d lifted from Instagram, that all looked like they were taken with phones. He seemed to be suggesting that they were accidentally good pictures but I couldn’t see how most of them had any merit at all.

            He took a poll and asked if we agree that photography can’t be high art. 42% disagreed.

            Photography is saturated and so we need a discerning palate. Photographic art lies in its non-representational aspects. The fact that photography is easy is when we appreciate a photo. The things we recognize are easy. When we appreciate a photo we move away from recognition and that opens up a space to appreciate all of the extra stuff. Imagine a picture of someone destitute during the Great Depression. Since you recognize the aspects that are easy to achieve, your mind moves to the deeper meanings such as symbolism, metaphor and expression.

            On the way home I stopped at the Australian Boot Company and someone finally had time to treat my boots. It usually takes quite a bit longer, but this time the manager did it and she was done in five minutes. She commented that I had the Blundies with the laces. I noticed that they did have them on the shelves anymore and she confirmed that they’d discontinued them. I asked about where to buy shoelaces and she said I could get them at Shoppers Drug Mart and I found one of their stores on the way home. I walked around, but couldn’t find any laces. Just as I was about to approach a floor person, three of them went into the warehouse section and didn’t come back. I asked the cashier and she didn’t know, but her customer knew the aisle number, then a security guard showed me where the laces were displayed.  I only found one pair long enough for sixteen eyelets.