Week 3 (Post #2) - Kracauer, Photography, and Temporal Contingency

In his essay "Photography," Kracauer claims that "from year to year [the photograph's] semiotic value decreases. The truth content of the original is left behind in its history; the photograph captures only the residuum that history has discharged" (55). He also states, "Photography is bound to time in precisely the same way as fashion. Since the latter has no significance other than as current human garb, it is translucent when modern and abandoned when old" (55).

I first take issue with Kracauer's claim concerning the depreciation of the photograph's semiotic value throughout time. The very juncture of "semiotic" and "value" is problematic. Kracauer intends to attach to symbolism or meaning "value," a world closely related to capital. In this way, Kracauer contextualizes his argument within a capitalist rhetoric, attempting to evaluate the symbolic "worth" of the photograph, a few pages before coining the photograph "a secretion of the capitalist mode of production" (61). Kracauer's own mode of deconstruction abides by and works within the socio-political theory that he criticizes for precipitating photography and for engendering its lack of potential for meaning-making and history-embodying.

Additionally, can semiotic "value" depreciate over time? Can the symbolic or meaning-making function of an object (or subject) be assessed? Is it numerical? Quantifiable? Can it be acquired or lost, like wealth? I would venture to say no:

Kracauer's additional criticizes the photograph as equivalent to fashion, an object completely contingent on time for its semiotic worth and historical value. However, if the photograph's ability to make meaning or to represent is solely based on temporal contextuality, doesn't that network of contexuality surrounding the photograph (the empty space without essence) continue to make meaning throughout time and adapt as the photograph progresses into the future? Doesn't the image--the time and space framed and cemented within the photographic image--maintain the same contextuality throughout time? Doesn't it always rely on the same socio-historical-temporal-spatial contexts as it did the day the image was shot? Actually, that contextuality, that network of contingency, could and might actually increase and spread throughout time, generating more channels and intertextualities and dependencies as more history is created, memory is lost, and the details of the photograph's era are forgotten/gaps are formed. The photograph then becomes more contingent, more reliable on the network of contexts to create its meaning;  and with an increased web of contexts, the photograph attains more meaning.