Mitchell Reading- Picture Theory
1). Ekphrastic- the verbal representation of visual representation
"ekphrastic indifference"- grows out of the commonsense perception that ekphrasis is impossible
ex. Bob and Ray’s photographs can never be made visible over the radio. No amount of description will bring them “to life”. The verbal description of an object may refer to it, describe it, or invoke it but it will never make it appear before you.
"Ekphrastic fear"- still moment of ekphrastic hope- moment of resistance or counterdesire that occurs when we sense that the difference between the verbal and visual representation might collapse and the figurative, imaginary desire of ekphrasis might be realized literally and actually.
Ex. “Radio magic”, the audience is able to imagine in full detail the photographs the host are describing and interacting with
"Ekphrastic hope"- “Shield of Achilles” in the Illiad- phase when the impossibility of ekphrasis is overcome in imagination or metaphor, when we discover a “sense” in which language can do what so many writers have wanted to do: “to make us see”
ex. radio show says “they wish you could be there”- but if you actually were there, their whole game would be ruined. The need for them to describe everything would no longer be necessary because you could see it yourself
These three phases can be summed up as this- “The interplay of these thre “moments” of ekphrastic fascination- fear, hope, and indifference- produce a pervasive sense of ambivalence, an ambivalence focused on Bo and Ray’s photographs: they know you can’t see them; they wish you could see them, and are glad that you can; they don’t want you to see them, and wouldn’t show them if they could.
2) Pros
-Metaphors
-Similes
(both used to “describe” objects)
-verbal and visual representations provide a well rounded description of the object both in the frame of mind and sight
-“art” breaks the bounds of skepticism in the way it captures the “uncapturable”/ “imagines the unimaginable”
Cons
-Alone, verbal representations seem supplemental
-creates skeptics
Travis Reading- Plot Thickens Everything
Difference between narrative world and matter-of-fact world.
The Narrative world explains the inexplicable while the matter-of-fact world is black and white with very little variation, and thus a lot of problems go unexplained or the explanation has holes in it.
Without explanations for actions, the viewer is trapped in trying to find a logical explanation for what is being observed. The narrative is the explanatory part while the matter-of-fact part literally just states facts.
Another difference between the matter-of-fact worlds and the narrative world involves scientific explanations. When science finds new information on how the world works, the new fact is accepted, practices are changed to accommodate it, and the old theory is discarded. Narrative is different. Narrative instead treasures the old story that explained it even more, believing it still contains other truths. Instead of replacing it, it keeps it to draw supplemental information from that the new version may not explain. “Although narratives gum up the facts and distort reality for their own purposes, they still survive… But the matter-of-fact world persists and intrudes, and one cannot avoid it for long”. Narrative and matter-of-fact must be viewed hand in hand when photography is between them, providing both simplified and complicated was of approaching the content.
Be ready to agree or disagree with Valery’s comment, “ …that bromide (chemistry make up of a print) proves stronger than ink”. How does he argue this changes the nature of words…?
Valery believed that photographs could be made to lie as language did, he felt that their inherent optical accuracy could release language from having to “convey the ideas of a visual object with any degree of precision” directly proceeding the usurped quote.
It seems that an argument is trying to be made that words are fabricated after the fact, only to explain what the eye sees. “Unlike other visual art, in photography the incidental is often the primary reason for the picture having been taken in the first place. This forces one to try to devise surrealistic meanings for it or explain it with a story of one’s own making, which allows those beyond the photographer a role in the creative process.
Discuss what Winogrand meant by “to photograph something to see what it would look like photographed”
Winogrand= master of the incidental
“The photograph isn’t what was photographed. It’s something else. It’s a new fact.”
-photographs do not try to form themselves into completed stories
-somewhere between the matter-of-fact world and the narrative world
Photographs take a moment out of it’s context. Winogrand could have meant that once the photograph is taken, it is something new all on it’s own, without a need for a context or any further explanation. To take a photo just to see what something would look like photographed, you are only looking for that one moment in time. You are not expecting that still shot to explain everything that was going on, everything that everyone captured in the scene was feeling, or the reason for the scene in the first place. You only desire the outcome of all of these separate entities working together.
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