As Blake has already noted, two of
the more salient concepts in the assigned selection from Burning With Desire are the emphasis on time as well as that on the
desire to “fix” a landscape. I want to explore the connections between these topics in light of Batchen’s discussion of the dispute between modern/formalist and
postmodern understandings of photography.
In his book’s preface, Batchen defines
one the goals of Burning With Desire as “to rewrite the traditional
history of photography’s origins … to show that history inhabits the present in
very real ways; that the practice of history is always an exercise of power;
that history matters (in all senses
of this word).” With this statement in mind—particularly the final clause—I
want to try to say something about the nature of the use of the term “fix” in
relation to the conception of time and photography, especially as Malcolm Andrews
defines it. Batchen quotes Andrews, noting that the word “fix” indicates “a
predatory, acquisitive instinct” (94). This desire to capture a scene from nature seems to be a
desire to transcend both the limitations and effects of time as well as the
boundary between nature and culture.
To “fix” an image of nature in a
photograph is to attempt to accurately preserve perception (or nature? I
suppose my diction here is probably significant) from a particular moment to,
presumably, be looked back on later. Thus, in its synchronic emphasis,
photography foregrounds the diachronic--as Batchen writes, “the present during
which we look at the photographic image is but a staging point, a hallucinatory
hovering that imbricates both past
and future” (93).
The
desired result of this preservation is, of course, an actual photograph—a “thing”
made by/from nature, that, now, as a form of representation, is a part of
culture. Perhaps I am oversimplifying when I point out that this seems to exemplify
the gap (as narrow as Batchen might argue it to be) between the formalist’s notion
of photography as a natural representation and the postmodernist’s notion of photography
as a product of culture.
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