The Photographic Index

It seemed that this week's readings were concerned with an anxiety about the photographic index and it's relationship to language, especially the concept of the empty shifter brought up by both Krauss and Doane. I was interested in Doane's explanation of the differences between the two types of the index, the 'trace' index and the diectic index, and how this explanation hinged on the idea of the linguistic shifter. I agree with Doane's argument that, in photography or cinema, the frame functions as the diectic index (pointing at that which exists for our gaze) while the images themselves function in a more traditionally indexical way. And yet, I'm not completely sure that I understand how the diectic index functions as an index in the first place. Yes, it points at something which exists, establishing a physical relationship between itself and a referent. But at the same time, the pointing finger, the "this," doesn't of itself seem to exist as a marker of the physicality of the referent. Thus, the tension between index and icon or index and symbol. The "this" could exist outside the realm of the purely physical, the finger could be pointing at nothing at all. Is it simply the expectation of physicality that imbues the diectic index with the status of index?

On a sort of unrelated note (and maybe less purely theoretical, so forgive me), I'm starting to get annoyed by all of the readings that presuppose a pure referent for photography. The readings mentioned an anxiety over the loss of trust in the photograph because of the digital's potential to undermine the physical referent. But this is an anxiety that carries through photographic history. It's almost as if none of the authors we've read give any thought to the potential for multiple exposures on a single negative, or using multiple negatives to create a single photograph. These techniques existed in the mid-1800s, not too long after photography began, even, in works of artists such as Henry Peach Robinson (see his piece "Fading Away"). Why is nobody engaging with this history of photographic manipulation if they seem to be so concerned with trusting photographic indexicality?