Photography + Aesthetics - Peter Wollen
p9
"Most discussions of photography centres around the commonplace fact that it provides information about the appearance of objects and events in the world."
2 related preoccupations:
-What is the connection between art and information? How can photography be an art if it is tied to the automatic production of informtation?
-What is the connection between knowledge and information? How can photography produce knowledge if it is tied to the registration of momentary appearances?
"This is a problem whether you beleive that knowledge reflects an essence behind or within appearances or whether you believe it to be a necessary displacement from appearances to a distinct order of discourse, symbolic rather than imaginary or ironic."
-What is the connection between knowledge and art?
This article shall hold this question in suspense, assumes the answer will be derived by discussion of the first two questions.
p10
painting responded to photography by embracing a Kantian perspective.
Pictorialist photographer disputes
p16
"Underlying problem was ow to establish a distinct identity for photography without blurring the line with painting, etching or other established media, on the one hand, and on the other, without falling back into photography of record."
p20
"One of the most interesting of theses in Susan Sontag's book ON Photography is her description of how recent American photography has displayed a surrealist taste for the obsolete, marginal and bizarre."
p22-23
"Benjamin of course, was searching for a way in which photography might produce knowledge as well as become an art."
Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk
Photography + Aesthetics - Peter Wollen
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