Towards a Philosophy of Photography

Schrodinger’s Cat Paradox,

Archival Inkjet Print, 14x21”,

$444

 

“It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation.  That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a “blurred model” for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photography and a snapshot of clouds and fog on banks.”

p.157

 

“The act of photography is divided into a sequence of leaps in which photographs overcome the invisible hurdles of individual time-and-space categories. If they are confronted by one of these hurdles (e.g. on the borderline between close-up and long shot), they hesitate and are faced with the decision about how to set up the camera. (In the case of fully automatic cameras this leap, this quantum nature of photography, has become totally invisible¬ – the leaps take place within the micro-electronic ‘nervous system’ of the camera.) This type of jump-start pursuit is called ‘doubt’. Photographers have doubts, but these are not a scientific, religious or existential doubt; rather, they are doubts in the sense of a new sort of doubt in which stopping short and taking a decision are reduced to grains – a quantum, atomized doubt.” p.37-38