The philosophy of photography is a really interesting topic in aesthetics, and maybe
it's more relevant now than ever, coz everyone's got a camera in their pockets - there
are hundreds of billions of photos on Facebook, Instagram is one of the most popular social
networks in the world; the photograph has exploded in cultural significance since smartphones came out.
But some philosophers have suggested that aesthetics shouldn't be thinking about photography at all.
Roger Scruton compares photography to painting. When you take a photograph of
something, the relationship between the subject and the way the photo looks
is causal. The photo looks the way it does because the subject looked that was when the photo was taken.
That selfie counts as a photo of me because that's the way I looked when the photo was taken. This does not count as a photo of the Loch Ness monster because the
Loch Ness monster does not look like that. As everybody knows, she looks like this.
A photo automatically refers to its subject, so in considering a photo you infer all your judgements about that subject.
But the relationship between a painting and its subject is intentional. The painting looks
the way it does because the artist wanted it to, and a painting is of somebody if the
artist intends it to be. That's why we can have paintings of things and people that don't even exist,
and paintings that represent people even if they didn't actually look like that. Scruton
says that paintings represent; whereas photos merely record.
The upshot of this is that we can aesthetically appreciate a painting in itself - we can take
aesthetic interest in the form of the work without inferring any outside considerations.
But any aesthetic interest we take in a photo is actually interest in the subject. If your Instagram
of a sunset appears beautiful, well actually it's the sunset that was beautiful. The photo merely records that.
So Scruton would say that Instagram, and indeed all photography, is aesthetically pointless.
He doesn't quite go so as far as saying photography isn't art, but he does think that a
photo just isn't the sort of thing that we can have an aesthetic interest in.
Now if you know anything about photography you might be thinking, "Whaaaattt?" You can
of course take aesthetic interest in a photo! Scruton has just ignored the entire art of photography,
because if you take a good photo it can be interesting in a way its subject isn't. If
you really choose the right contrast and colour settings and really make it *pop,* you can provide
some stimulating viewing that just looking at the subject wouldn't give you.
Ken Van Sickle is a photographer in New York City; he's been taking photos for sixty years
and they are gorgeous. He says that when you take a picture you have to consider all the
same things a painter consider like colour, and lighting, and composition. He explicitly distinguishes taking
a photo to be a visual record of a thing, and taking a photo to be admired as a
photo. He thinks that a good photographer can develop a recognisable style, and make a photo
of anything interesting.
This is called the Style Argument, and William King puts it like this: yes, the relationship between
the was a photo looks and its subject is causal, but a good photographer can enter into that causal chain
and tinker with it in order to affect the final product. So, photographs can be shaped by intention
and therefore they can represent, and therefore they can be objects of aesthetic appreciation.
But we might need to be a little bit careful there, because Scruton could reply. He could say that we might well
take aesthetic interest in a photograph that's stylish, but then we're not aesthetically interested in the photo.
We're aesthetically interested in an object which has some abstract patterns or some appealing
colours, and which *happens* to be a photo. We're still not interested in the
photo in virtue of its being a photo. So photos just still aren't the
the sorts of things that can be aesthetically appreciated in themselves.
So we need to go deeper, and actually challenge Scruton's definition of a photo as just a
visual record of a thing. And Instagram filters might actually help us do this. Scruton thinks that
when you look at a photo, you see its subject. When you see this picture of
me and Mike Rugnetta, you are seeing me and Mike Rugnetta, albeit indirectly. This is
the Transparency Thesis, so called because it imagines photos as transparent layers through which
you can see the subject.
Just because you can see the subject through the photograph doesn't mean that all your
aesthetic interest is in that subject. The photo is like a filter through which
you see at the subject, but you also still see the filter laid on top and how its made up. Dominic Lopes said,
"Seeing through the surface does not block the surface itself."
MIKE: Oh, hey, and speaking of surfaces!
OLLY: Oh hey Mike! We were just talking about you.
MIKE: Yeah, I heard! Idea Channel is just a couple channels down the hall. I was on my way back
from NerdSync and I heard my name; I heard you talking about surfaces... do you mind if I?
OLLY: By all means!
MIKE: Ah, OK, thanks! So you were talking about the Transparency Thesis: asking whether we're aesthetically
interested in the subject matter of photos or aspects of the photo itself. Which, really
makes me wonder how this all applies to the internet in general, considering it a kind
of surface, laid additionally over whatever "surface" photos already come with. Largely,
I think, there's this idea that it's challenging, if not impossible, to have a genuine, classically
aesthetic experience on the internet: that, like, you really have to be in a gallery or
performance space or something.
Which is to say, for a lot of people it's easy to have the same opinion of aesthetic
experience on the internet as Roger Scruton has of it with photography. What we're talking
about on this week's Idea Channel is how and why that might be in relationship to these
tags you may have seen on Instagram, tumblr, Pinterest, where people tag things "aesthetic"
or "my aesthetic." I think those tags, and all of these ideas, probably all work together
somehow. Ok. I've said my piece - I'll let you get back to it. I gotta head to the spam
traps anyways, they're completely full. So I'll see you in a couple minutes.
Thanks buddy! So if Lopes and Mike are right, you can in fact take an aesthetic interest in
the way something has been photographed, because there's something present in a photo not present in
the subject, namely the filter that is the photo itself. I think
a really good illustration of this is infra-red photos of space. By using telescopes
sensitive to infra-red light we can take pictures of celestial bodies that we can't see with our naked eyes. I think some
of these photos are amazingly beautiful, but that aesthetic interest can't just be in the subject because
we can't see the subject; it must be in the photo, in virtue
of its being a photo of a particular sort. So the Style Argument was kindof onto something
when it said that we can alter the causal chain between subject and photograph , it was just
a little... unfocused.
But what do you think? Are photos the kinds of things that can be aesthetically interesting, or is it just their subjects?
Massive thank you to Mike and the whole PBS Idea Channel crew for being in this week's episode, I've wanted to collaborate
with them since I started doing YouTube so it's been an absolute dream come true. I have a cameo
in their video on aesthetics this week, so if you wanna check that out go over to their channel - there's a link in the dooblidoo.
And for more philosophical videos from me every Friday, please subscribe.
Lastly, something else very exciting: I am working on something big right now. I'm gonna be away in March so I'm prerecording a four
-part series to be released over the month of March every Friday at the usual time. It's my most ambitious and
wide-ranging project yet. It's gonna be amazing, I can't wait to share it with you. If you wanna support it you can check out my Patreon page
and here's a little teaser trailer.
My name is Marx.
My world... is industry, and class conflict.