Post 1- Death and photography (in Kracauer + Bazin)

There are a lot of issues to discuss with these readings, so I'll try to be succinct with my thoughts. To follow in the same vein as other posts for this week, I want to look more closely at the provocations and similarities posed by the Kracauer and Bazin readings.

First of all, I noted that both essays begin rather poetically, and from the start refer to the photograph through metaphor and personification. Bazin eloquently transitions from his discussion of funereal art to the idea of the photo as mummification, an immortalization of the subject to satiate our desire for immortality, and also personifies it as the great liberator, rescuing the plastic arts from the search for likeness and thus freeing them to focus on the symbolic. Kracauer is alternatively nostalgic, wry, and even rambling (in my opinion, anyway--the chapters seem somewhat ambiguously organized), but finally settles on the idea of photography as a distanciating force, one which claims reality and truth while actually effacing its so-called subject (in contrast to memory). Enough people have already discussed their disagreement with his devaluation of photography, particularly artistic photography, so I'll save my comments for tomorrow. I would simply like to add that Bazin, too, devalues photography as an "art," reducing it to a technological process which serves the appetites of the masses, to the advantage of 'real art.' I do find it intriguing that so many more people were provoked by Kracauer than Bazin, when I saw a good amount of similarity between the two, at least with regards to what others seem to be objecting to in Kracauer. For instance, I could not help but think of both articles as ignoring, or at least dismissing, discourses on the artistic value and unique capabilities of photography... As a side note, like Blake, I did note the strong undercurrents of Kracauer's commentary on capitalism, especially as he decried America for beginning and spreading the use of illustrated magazines, and his constant critique of fame and fashion, at least as regards their connection to photography. Additional questions that ran through my mind, about both readings:

- Why do they both treat photography through the 'lens' of metaphor and personification?

- Why do both writers seem to value cinema over photography (as an aesthetic endeavor as well as a social/semiotic/etc tool), when photography is obviously the foundation of film? What is it about film as opposed to the photograph that gives it such importance for these scholars?

A little more on Kracauer and the question of photography's function in allaying our fear of death and erasure: :

He seems to me to be not only distrustful, but almost afraid of photographs, for several reasons. For one, as with the story of the 'grandmother,' one has to "take on faith" the truth of what is presented by the photograph, and the traditions that so ambiguously give it context. And with regards to that "truth," despite what Bazin says about their ability to capture the reality of a subject, to Kracauer, photographs not only fail to find and fix the "true" identity of the subject, but they in fact erase the subject by their very existence. I can't at the moment remember who noted the case of Australian Aboriginals, but I definitely felt that Kracauer shared an almost superstitious view of photography...

The question of the uncanny photograph, then:

There is only one instance I can think of wherein I feel the same absolute distrust of the photograph as that displayed by Kracauer. For myself, there is an unsettling effect, even a sense of betrayal, to realizing that what is presented by a film or photo no longer exists in that form, or even at all. Just think of watching a movie with Heath Ledger, or a photograph of the Twin Towers intact, for example: isn't there something uncanny about a contemporary image, a "current-event photograph," as Kracauer might say, that shows something that, only as of recently, no longer exists? Watching Heath Ledger walk and speak is unsettling, just as is seeing the until-fairly-recently NYC skyline complete with the Towers and World Trade Center... Why is that? Is it because these things ended unexpectedly and violently that we experience none of the usual 'relief' from death's shadow? What do others think?

Finally [a less pertinent question, perhaps, for this class]:

How and why does Kracauer use gender/femininity to talk about photography, especially in a negative light? Why is "the demonic diva" used? Or the grandmother? Or his denunciation of fashion? Why are all of these 'symbols of femininity' used to explain the simultaneous attraction and horror of the photograph? Are they more applicable and/or powerful as metaphors for his argument?

Looking forward to discussion.