Batchen, "Pictures"

I would like to focus this week’s blog post on a single line from Batchen that I believe says a great deal about the nature and objective of photography. On page 107, Batchen explains French historian Jean-Claude Lemagny’s argument for some kind of balance between two different approaches: “‘a history through photography’ and a history in which ‘photography would have to reflect on itself.’” Lemagny explains, “As far as possible, we have aimed to keep everything in view, concentrating simultaneously upon both sides of the story: on the one hand, photography seeking its own internal coherence; on the other, photography dependent on everything that surrounds it.” This idea of the medium of photography being simultaneously independent and dependent of its surroundings is quite puzzling to me, as it is a paradox that seems to work against itself.

The medium of photography is something that cannot exist on its own. In order for a photograph to exist, there has to be something else in existence that looks identical to what the photograph shows (this is where the question of indexicality comes into play). What this means is that there is no universal photograph, there is no one photograph that is the photograph capable of embodying what photography means and is trying to say. However, is this inevitable condition specific to this medium alone? It seems to me that painting, sculpture, film, etc. are also “seeking [their] own internal coherence” while concurrently “dependent on everything that surrounds [them].” The reason for this is that all of these different mediums play with their indexicalities in one way or another; none of them can exist without an original “something else” existing first and thus providing the subject of representation.

That being said, perhaps the reason that photography is thought of as embodying Lemagny’s paradox is that it really does not allow for much originality beyond the placement of what will become the subject of the photograph (for purposes of my argument I am discounting the photographer’s technique in taking the actual photograph, so I apologize for that). How is it, then, that photography succeeds in “seeking its own internal coherence”? I really am unsure as to what this even means…