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Re: [OM] OT Philosophy (was) OM4Ti Failure

Subject: Re: [OM] OT Philosophy (was) OM4Ti Failure
From: "John A. Lind" <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 21:31:47 +0000
At 01:22 1/22/02, Andrew Fildes, in search of a photographic Weltansicht, wrote:
You read that as a desire for 'meaninglessness?' - Good grief.
Great philosophers didn't ask meaningless questions - that's why so many of
them met unpleasant ends. I really am interested in a philosophy of
photography. Honest!
AndrewF

Meta-thinking is good for the soul. It provides the "first principles" and Weltansicht much as Euclid did with his axioms for [Euclidean] Geometry. Everything else flows from them through Aristotelian deductive reasoning. It is *very* important to remember the initial "axioms" are *induced* and **not** *deduced* [see Thomas Aquinas' taxonomy of "truth"]. Hence, axioms are *always* questionable and debatable.

Some Brain Food:
-------------------------------------
John's Three Photographic Axioms:

1. The "Science" is about light. Film doesn't record subjects or objects, it only records light and *only* light [photons within a wavelength band or range]. Understanding light, how it behaves, including optics and how film responds to it is The Science.

2. The "Art" is about *making* versus *taking* photographs. This requires visualizing what the image will be before the shutter is opened. The process rarely requires hours of deep cogitation; it can be near instantaneous. Visualizing does require being able to articulate *why* the photograph is being made. Many times that is also relatively simple. If the "Why" can be articulated, visualization for the image flows, and that determines the "How" [method to make it].

3. Creating photographs (composition) is a "subtractive" process. Painting is "additive" beginning with a blank canvas to which the painter adds the visualized image. OTOH the photographer begins with all of reality, and subtracts those visual elements that do not (and cannot) contribute to the image and its subject material. Part of this is understanding how to use light in creating and communicating a 3-D visual universe using a 2-D medium, and the general cause->effect releationships humans have to visual stimuli (e.g. brighter/lighter colors advance and duller/darker colors recede).

Aristotle's four aitiai have been most helpful to me in determining the aspects of the subject material to "celebrate" and the ones to "conceal" [from his Physics, Book II, Chapter 3]. Aitiai translates roughly to "causes" which can be used to describe the physical objects we observe:

   a. "Material cause;" what the object is made of.
   b. "Formal cause;" its structure, shape and form; what it looks like.
   c. "Efficient cause;" a poor translation to English because it relates
       to the object's beginning; how it came to be (or how it was built);
       the "actions" that created it or "context" that created a need for
       it and prompted its creation.
   d. "Final cause;" (Greek "telos"); an object's "purpose" or "end" or
      "goal" and explains what it does or intends to do, or how it
      interacts with its environment.

The first two aitiai do not require anything but the object itself; the third can usually be determined from the object itself, but sometimes not and can require knowing the environment in which it was created. The fourth requires the object's current context or environment. Without an environment in which to interact, there is no telos! An image can express one or more of the aitiai but should only contain those needed for the "Why."
-------------------

-- John


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