Putting a twist on the argument

[mbarrick]

This goes back to Ed Book's comments about the in-camera manipulations that digital cameras do and about Photoshop manipulations. Below is an image that "all I did was resize it in Photoshop":

© 2002 Michael R. Barrick

This picture was created entirely in-camera using the "whiteboard" settting of the camera (which is intended to capture text written on a whiteboard). So, by the conventional logic of the photography groups this would be a "pure" photograph, unsullied by additional "cheating" in photoshop. Of course I could have gotten exactly the same effect by using Photoshop to reduce a photo to a 1-bit pixel depth. Or by creating an old-fashioned halftone using traditional photographic techniques. Or I could have drawn something quite like this with a pen and ink.

So what is more "pure" and why? And why does it matter at all?

Comments

Conclustion (part 2 of 2)

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Given that lets re-examine the photograph of the column. The author of the photograph choses the specific reflection off a subset of the photons reflected by the building at a specific interval of time. The building itself, while its appearance (i.e. the photons it reflects) is an element of its overall design, also has tactile, spatial, temporal and functional aspects. The author of image the is making a a very specific decision about the capture of a tiny subset of the photons that will be reflected by the building over the course of its entire existence. The author of the photograph is also choosing to capture those photons using a specific tool on which he is counting on specific distortions or "mediations" intrinsic to the media. Far from being 100% the authorship of the buildings architect and builders as you proposed, the resultant reflective surface (i.e. photographic print) is insignificantly the work of the building's architects and builders (created by the capture of the photons reflected by, say 1/10,000th of the building's surface for 1/100th of a second on a building that will stand for 1000 years, ergo, one of 31,557,600,000,000,000 possible 1/100th second exposures some portion of the that buildings surface), and given diffent possible exposures, choices of different camera or different means of recording the image entirely such as the author capturing the photons with his own eye and mediating the image though his mind, body, paint and canvas, and that the visual aspect of the building is only one portion of the experience of the building it, the image is nearly wholly the result of the image author's authorial decisions.

By the same token any reproduction of an image that results in a significantly similar perception of photons in the viewer's eye could be considered plagurism. A recognizable post-card reproduction of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" represents an incursion on the authorship of the original image because the viewer's visual experience of the postcard is significantly similar to the visual experience of viewing the orginal work. An microscopic image of the surface of the painting is but an insignificant portion of a viewer's experience of the painting and a unique visual experience of its own, not unlike the photograph of the building, and would therefore constitute a unique image with a distinct author other than Van Gogh. Conversely the insignifcant inclusion of the image (say a postcard reproduction of the painting on a rack in front of a store in a photograph of the store itself) in another image such that the Van Gogh is unrecognisable and insignificant use of the image authored by Van Gogh and also represents a new, unique image of discreet authorship. If, however, you painted a perfect forgery then the experience would be even closer to the orginal Van Goth than the post-card and would therefore be clearly plagurism of the visual experience authored by Van Gogh, despite the skill and cunning involved in the creation of the forgery.

I think this fully incorporates your premise that while authorship is never pure, it is quanitfiable, and is a more satifactory criteria for that quantification. Unless you have any critiques of this I'm pretty happy with this conclusion.