Optics, Aesthetics, Epistemology : the History of Photography Reconsidered

OPTICS, AESTHETICS, EPISTEMOLOGY:

THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY RECONSIDERED

Peter Wollheim B.A., University of Rochester, 1970

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS (COWNICATION STUDIES)

in the Department

Communication Studies

@ Peter Wollheim 1977 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY November 1977

Name: Peter Wollheirn

Degree: Master of Arts (Communication Studies)

Title of Thesis: "Optics, Aesthetics, Epistemology: The History of Photography Reconsidered."

Examining Committee:

Chairperson: Thomas J. Mallinson

J. C. Haqpr - Supervisor

J. Zaslove

E. Gibson EMrnal Examiner Associate Professor Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University

Date Approved : November 29th.1977. PARTIAL COPYRTCHT LICENSE

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Title of Thesis/~issertation:

"OPTICS AESTHETICS, EPISTEMOLOGY: THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY RFXONS IDERED"

Author :

(signature)

PETER WOLLHFIM

(name)

NQV: 23rd. 1977

(date) This thesis dfals with the status of "truthi' - spis+;mological, assthhetic, and psycholcgical - % r. gn~toyra~hicr~pr~:s~+r:?arltior..

Using aaterials from the sociology of art arid c1~mparativ2 epistemof ogy, the photograph is contrast+d wLzh th~medi.;val Icon, and its evolution exatnined ir, ternms of various "truthsf* 3bout natur3 and optics as def icad by scicrAtificinquiry. Th+ thlsls concfuiles by exa~ininganxieties that photography arouses in modern culturz, an:? demor.strates that they ar pdrt caf 'idrgor anthivaiences which can be investigated as the f3tishlziny of appearancss ix capitalistic society.

iii As the mirror said, "It's all done uith people."

--- Tom Bobbirds Thanks 3lso go tc Gary gilcox, the intrepid airo or of -----Photsqypgh~r magazine, fo: allowing me to try out a variety of ids-as in print befo~ecornmitticy +h+~to th~3sspayes; to i;ir.3.Pf:>isvrj, ui the Cuudciidzi Fokk C~n~piliyf3r p~ovidlngv?iuabi'-3 information on studio portraiture; to Rev. aensua Jones for

EiblFcal refermces; ind to dss, Pam Parford, Linda Clark, and

Suzie Sz+rkes fcr clerical assist2nct.

I would also lik~to express my gratitude to tns Canada Council fcr thij Arts and sirncn Fra ser UniverskC.y's P~3siLif?n+,*sOffice,

S~nate,and Dcan of Graduate Studies for financial support of my research. P?rsonal thanks also gs to Louis Dayuerr3, for starting it all; to U.D. ~i.12~for his madndss; and James Lsr;ikin, for the loan of his Exakta, Mcre thatks ars ?xt-?eded to ths

Cralley;, anu vanccuvor Schccl of Art, for listeriing; to my parents; tc Eir,da Kowa'iski, for sharin5~the yrowth of my vision

Petting me sip t5c mornixy's t~a23 silent.?-. While I accept final Table of Contents

Approval i i

AL-t-rnt i i i 'I" U I. * U" C

Quotat ion iv

Acknowledgements v

Foreward viii

Introduction: Photography: the Search for an Aesthetic

I. The Photograph and the Icon

11. The Eye as Machinery

111. The Aesthetics of the Rational

IV. Image and Essence

Footnotes

Bibliography

vii This thesis is part of a losger wosk-ic-progress on pha+ograpftic criticisoa, the miri purpose of which is 'to Liberate photagrap+.y from ths confines cif its current ideological frameworks. The geceral aettod of that work is set forth in this thesis, and will be follovea up by accou~tscf how individual photographic artists have fought against the cofiventicnal concepts of the photograph as representation, and how the form and style of their works reflect this struggle. The reader is therefore invited to consult other reviews and articles that 1 have writteri on this topic. 1

viii Photagraphy: the Search for ar~assthetic

Despite its increasing popularity and accdptanca as a fine art, photography remaias onE of the asst pr~blematicand barren areas of serious aesthetic critiuist~. Hithic the last ten years voices as diverse as Ap~lrtuwgand Wu2.a~Photoqrg~hy have called attention %a this vacuum, but there is still no recognized and cc herent body of photographic critic is^,

Or. the whole, the greatEst obstacle to the gsawth sf such criticism is the habit of rggizrdlng the carnera as a sy~tax-free and scjmeuhat passive instrumect suitabk for merely recordisg visual images. The pre-history of photographic c~iticismis tho battle for the recogcition of photography as an exprsssive wediua fought hy Alfred Steiglitz, the F/54 group, and a number of other photcgraphers, curators, editofs, art historians acd critics. To a large exte~ttheir goal has been accoiaplished aad phctography is row accepted by museums, galleries and art schools as a legitimate field of interest. But ia a short aoncgraph on The

Criticism @ Photography. 2s (197(1)2, Profassor John L,bkard suggested that there is still a residual refusal, on the part of prcfessional critics, tc treat photography as soia~+.hlngother that a mechanical cperatior. sccessible to artist a~dnon- artist alike, r~garal~usof ski11 or tzaicing, Vard suggested that the general public complements this attitude by respordinq to the subject matrer of photographs rather thar, to the style of d-;piction.3

Horf recently B.D, Coleman, fcrmer critic for the Villaae Voice and gg~York Times, has cites some immwiiate anG practical obstacles to the creation ot an on-goiag discussion. As Coleman points out, there are fen public forums for the axchacg~of views aside from consuwer-oriented magazines largely dominated by the commercial interests of advestisers. This of ten engenders a cheap pseudo-criticism which either reflects the momentary idiosyccrasies of a particular reviewer, or discusses the image as an end-product of certain combinations of equipwnt. Coleman noted that the readership of these magazines uses photography primarily as a craft or hobby, and rsspords to critical writing by cft~nrequesting informa tion on cameras and lenses. Speaking from experience,

Ccfl-aman deplored #'the lack of a func+,ior,al. vocabulary for the criticism of photography."

The language currently applied to photographs as distinct fro@ other kicds of images is derived ~ntirely frcm the jargon of tech~ique; it is a form cf shop talk which pertains to the manufacturiny of photographs as cb jects rather than to their 5f~rkinCjsoh effects as images. Ir essence, it deals not with the creative/intelfectua1 problems of the photographer as artist and communicator, but xith the practical difficulties faced by the photographer as craftsman.*

There are a number of additicnal problems which hinder critical discourse. Ccntemporary aesthetic theory relies tteavif y on definitions and distinctions, but the term "photcgraphW apppliss aqually to snapshots, photograms, x-ray acd aerial phctcgraphs, co~mrcialportraits and wedding pictures, i.d, and passport shots, and a variety of other images made for purely utilitarian pu rposes.The borderlines betuaer; some conimerciaf work - in advertisi~g,architectural cr fashion photography - ar,d '$fine arte photographs are often indistinguishable, Photomicrographs made during the course of scientific research have often beer. exhibited for their aesthetic qualities. at what point can or shculd a critic wake meaningful distinctions between art and technology?

S~condly,photogsaphshave become a commonplace eleiwnt in the mass media and we are exposed to dozens, if not hundreds of ~hotographsdaily in newspaFers, magazims, books, posters, an

TV, billboards, caie~dars,etc. One result of this widespread usage fs that photographs have corns to b~ @oreuskd than viewed since ?hey compete with other messages for our attention.

Photographers are increasingly faced with a situation nct unlike that ~xp~riencedby pcets of the early ninete~cthcentury, whsn advertising and the popular press threatened to reduce poetic dictioc to a liiggu xglqaris for selfiog insuranc~policies and diuretics,s Photography is deeply embedded in vbat is now called i*popufar culture", a sub-ject which has drawn only a minimum of scholarly interest, Critics cf Mfir,e artw have avoided the area en tire1y. 6 Photography has also blosscmed out during a particularly chaotic pzriod in the history of the arts and their criticism,

As Harold Rosenberg aptly put it, the w~rkof art has become "an asxious objecta. "*Am I a masterpiece, it must ask itself, 'or

ar, asscmhlage of j~ntc?*~f7With the profusiot of styles and

wcvements during the last century criticisnt has become a fairly risky activity.

Ore thing (has) been learned from the nstori~us mistakes of the past one hundred years, and the lesssz was thoroughly confusing. It was ehat co new work, no matter how apparently senseless, repulsive or visually vacant, could be rejected without runnirig the risk that it would turn up as a masterpiece of the era. The story cf the Ridicule Of The Badicals - ot the Impressionists, Van Gogh, Batisse, fl~digliani,Duchamp - had becom part of the folklore of painting.8

The same trend 9s evidert in the 0th~~arts acd critics saels to hav~responded by staunchly defending yesterday*^ standards, or jumpir,g cn to each new and with-it: b~rduagou, The photographic critic works in an era durirg which the barely adorried act of public masturbation has receZvcd serious attention ir a major

jcusnal of the fine arts.9

Among the problems associated with this anxiety are refurbished harig-overs from the Romantic idealization of art and artist, Its photographic version reachtd a visible peak following the release of Antonioni*~Blow-TJE {1967), when phrases like cantera" and

"StAg photographern received a nw supercharge. Blow-&@s snkfimical message ixfuded twc ideas that had been percolati~g

%hrcugh the collective cultural u~consciousthrcugh tout the sixties: that art had become Big Business in North America and

Engiand, and tkat the role of the artist *as now a p~rmission-giving stereotyps fcr smoking dcpe, kicky sex, and other fcrms of libidinous activities,lQ Not or-iy do these ideas draw attention away from the actual photographs to be considered, but they place critics into the negative stereotype of the jealous would-be artists who, e~bitteredby tkeir own hack of creativity, wha become parasites and power-brokers, rr-If you know so much about great photographs why can't yqg niake them?t* is now a standard defense against critical activity.

ina ally, photographp*~long-standing r~sistanceto criticism could be takon as a sigc of health arid vitality, One can too easily imagine graduate students suf fefiny t hrcctugh dull seminaxs, sitting in stuffy rooms on warm spring afternoons, trying not to d.oze cf f while the professor droc~son endPessfy about the minutae tc be gleaned from the personal fife cf some uisignificant photographer who was the subject r;f someene else * s r~search prcject, Those of us who fcve photography would hate tc see it share the fate of English literature, which has largely rewained a *qproblemNfor foraalis-tic analysis, In academic quarters criticism is generally a mattsr of iateliectualizatior and interpretation; the approach to art seerus derived, without "' mcdification, from the dissecting roow or laboratory, Critics appear less co~ceraedvith their ow~sbspanses to art than with fitticg the work into scme preconceived th~oryof interpretation.

And as Susar Scntag has declared,

Today.. th~project ot int~rpretation is largely reactionary, stiffling. Lik~the xunas of the automobile and Mavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations ot art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture vhosa already classic dilemtna is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of ecergy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect on art. 1

Is tE~rea way ther to talk about photography without killing it, and without falling into the trap of rejactiny any sort of intellectual guide to the appreciation of art? 1 believe there is, but it is one which is anathema to our dominank aesthetics since it invclves those areas of inquiry subterdeC by the names of Sigmund Freud, Karl Plarx, and John Dewey. This does not imply th~creatior, of one more Preudo-Barxist theory of interpretation, but does point to the conceptual Beans whereby our personal responses to photographs cac be put into broader and deeper experiectial contexts. It is ar approach close in spirit to that of oriental cultuses in which art is not a separate catsgory of existence, but forms an important commoLtary orA the aesthetics of everyday living.

The contextual aesthetic t.6 be propcsed is one which can hcp.ifulily move us beyond viewing the photograph as merely an e:ld in itself, cs as the manifest expressio~of a Istent content, or as the si~pleprcduct of class irterrsss, ~houghpreud, Marx, and Dewey have all been accused of reducing art to fa~tasyor ndeoiogy, a close reading of their thcuyhts reveals the basis for a commoE agreement that the power of fir~eart steius from its ability for un~askingthe dogma, prudery, moralizing, depersonalization, and idealization that actually ktep us from coming to grips with reality. From a Freudian perspective this meam that art helps us recognize the prices %re pay for living ir, a conple x civilizatioc: the repression of spontazeity and desire, ar,d the accoapa~yingguiLt, neurosis, separation, and defensiv+ness erected against our own deepest feeiicgs. For riarx, and particularly Engels, art can diemystify "the fetishism of commodities, reificatior,, alienation, fa1se cor;sciousness, ideclogy, objectificaticn, e~trangement.~l~And for Dewey, art provides a way out of the false dichotoiaies that cripple our

%b. thoughts a~demotions, dichotomies between subjective and P* ' okjective, Beans and ends, text and context, art and life, body and rai.r,d, spirit and matter. Eoreover ail thres thinkers suggested that art transcerrds its imntedia te psychosocial contzxts precisely to the extent that it beccmes as sensual and material as possible, and that its life-affirmicy qualities are ultiaately derived froa the erotic.

Bt the sase time all three recognize that some types of aesthetic experience serve as opiates which provide substitute or entertaicing satisfactions, druggics c~~scicuscessicstead zf extending 5.t. These are the forms of artistic experience .that

D. ti,tawrel.nce denounced as l*countorf;eitu, while he still left open the p~ssiblitythat the dialectic cature ok art makes soas elemsnt of coucttrfeit inevitable irk every ~ff0ft.13 For a contextual aesthetic this point is crucial, for around it revolves tho

~uesticr.of the workas ectrapment ic cocvantiocaf and hence sat2 modes of experience, modes which offer worse than ~othingin ithe way of growth and challlecge, But in order to miake these sorts of discriai~atio~s the vie wer-critic seeds to know what areas are safe and ccnventional, and this neacs studying the repressive and oppressive ele~entsof the culture in which the work origicates.

For pkotograpf~yespecially this requires a self-exaaination on the part of tte viewer-critic to determice %he extent to which he or she participates in defenses aga~nstnew and potextially threatening experiences not sanctioned or rewarded by our culture,

This demands taking risks which are at least equal to those of the creative photographer, and makes the critic an ally ic the struggle for new ways of seeing,

The materials for a contextual. study of photcgraphy'are gait@ plentiful, and await only an open-endel: synthesis, There are the excellent though limited histories of photography by Beaumont

Newhall, HzPi~utand Allison Gernshei~, and other histcrian-critics; cchparative studies cf photography and painting casting light cc both subjects; cow~entson photographic aasthetics generated by ttz age -old pur-ist-pictoria1is.t controversy; writings by pioneer photograph~rslike Steiglitz, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston; studies by McLuhan and others cn the s~ciailapact of photographic technology; the miscellanecus and often scattered writings of a few critics; and above all the images theinse~ves, tcs which wa ~ustalways turn for final verificatZon of our theories,

Perhaps the most appropriate netbod for correlating these materials, and for ovc;rcoming many of the obstacles to criticisln mentio~edearlier, is the the approach from epistemolcgy, the thecry of krowladge. Phctography Is th~only art still burdened with the double expectation of truth beauty, mostly because the perceived literalism and accuracy of the camara allow for application in science, medicine, Taw, ard warfare. The uncritical acd widespread acceptance of the photograph as a re~esr;ntatior. of reality makes truth a@ aesthetic value without really dealing with its epistemological significance, but the critic must question the aeaaing of "trutht* with respect to both aesthetic acd episteaic frames of reference, Historically it is obvious that the tendency cf acade~icthecry to treat all art as a representation of nature

[real or ideal) has its correlates and predecessors in other theories of representation such as th~habit of abstracting types and ncrms out of the world, geLerated by smpiricaf science; or in the growth of aepresecrationaf over participatory models of democracy; or in the use of money as a symbol for materials and fzkcr OR the comaodity market, Thf idea of rspresentation has a long history with regard to both art and science, of which photograhy is the most important recent exaiiiple, Takinu it as a starting point gives ore a handle ofi a number of athex social acd philosophical issues which aesthetic theory is required to address, Representatioc was also a primary ele~entic the Roma~tic th~oryof art, which held that photography cculu be used to ~irror a higher or nsn- ater rial reality, and in the Surrealist attempt to use photography as a direct representation of ths unconscious an& its processes, As a result of the theory of representati.cn, pkctography and th? other asts have bseo judged by values extrifisic to them, values iaported from science, religioL, political science, or pspchoanalysis, A contextual theory of photography must tkeref~refollow the principle of represectation to its limits, before bei~gfreed fro& those root assuwktions.

What follcvs then iB an effort to construct ar aesthetic for photography which is relational, not repr~sentational. Relational thinking about art brings us into the tuertieth century instead of linqrfing on in the eightee~thor nineteenth: it joins an intellectual stream which is havicg profound effects in physics {relativity of the observer), biology (ecology a~dadaptation), psyct~logy(Gestalt theory and psychoanaiysis), and commucication theory, The principle of rrpresentatiofi in ail these fields is beirig zeasscssed, if net discarded. There is no reasm for aesthetics to stand aloof from these dovelopra~nts,especiafiy when - 31 - it is evident that thesa new ways sf gathering and svaluating knovl~dgrabout ths world are finally approaching the place vhere art has always taken us. The Photoqraph and the Icon

Fcr actlvo photographers, teachers and critics, the subject cf aesthetics holds out the promise of acswcring a series of basic questions: what makes an image work, and what is it about certain images that makes them mfanicyful and effective? Where does the power of a strong photograph reside, and how can one get in touch with that power? How does cne put a finger on the evanescent quality cf a fine photograph which sets it off fr~mlesser creatiocs?

The ffiost influential answers, in conteatporary circles, ccme from the Anglo-Arnsrican trecd in afsthstics oftan called formalism by its adh~rects. Broadly defined, formalisnn has dorninatsd phctogxaphic criticism since its inception, and formalist assumptions are u~questionirgfyaccepted today in most discussiocs of photography, whether in academic journals, popular magazines and neaspapers, or historical accounts of photography as a fine art, Because it is so ~nweshadin the broader philosophy of liberal humanis@, foraalisa also pervades the teaching of photography in Morth America, especially at the uaiversit y level.

Taken at its roots, formalism begins to answer the basic quest5ons by ~ai~taininythat works of art are successful when they satisfy "a natural aesthetic impulse" in "a suitably trained a~ u prepared obser~er,~~~4This aesthetic impulse, as formalists see it, is an inbcrn drive similar to hunger ox thirst, but which operates at a much higher &lane of cultivation and fulfillment, bs a uniqucfy humar endowment the a~stheticimpulse is a gfnuinz need ir. itself, one which cannot be reuuced to any other, and which is relatively autonomous in creating its cwn standards of satisfaction. Por~alistsgo on to argue that works of art coae into being largely in respocse to the aesthetic impulse, and that th~ulti~ate value of art tiderives partly and perkaps mainly frotn th6 full exercise of (this) trained and mature se~sibilityextended to maxfnum capacity,"~s Effective photography would therefore be that which best sustains aesthetic feelings in a prepared and sympathetic observer,

Despite the appeal of iarnediate practicaiity, any effort to apply formalis~~sbasic premises to art naturally leads to another, and mere ccaplicated set of problems, Just how can the maker or appreciator of phctographs isoiate the aesthetic experience from other kirds of experience - how does one separate the beauty of a sursst frcm the beauty cf a photograph of that sunset? Sincs many photographs have practical uses, and many utilitarian images are aestheti.cally appealing, what is .the essence of the artwork which disti~guishcsit froa si~ilarobjects : can aK attractive pkctograph of ice crystals, made for the purposes of scien*iffc ir. vestigation, be seriously c~nsideredas an ob jf ct of autonomous aesth~?ic slgcificar.ce? And i,t the iqaesthetic izgulsew is truf y a single, unified capacity, how can one deal with the satisfactiofs offered ky inages as diverse as photograais, nudes, lacascapes, archit2ctural shots or portraits, or ffiadia as varied as music, drama arid sculpture, often quite unrelated to photography?

It is in answer to questions like these that formalists have tried to evolve a theory of artistic categories, one which seeks to define words like "artg3, "beauty", and itaesthetic experiencew as clearly as possible, Bhen applied to photography this search for essence and uniqueness usually translates into a classification of the ~ormativeor ideal properties of the nredium, those qualities which best characterize accomplishnient in photography as distinct from painting, cinematography, and other kinds of visual expression. Pcrmaiist aesthetics, such as those embodied in the "straightn or "puriste tradition, tend to value images that are unique1y phetcgraphic over those which borrow from other ~edia.

In spsaking about photography in particular, the formalist apprcach has g~neralfycantered itself around a very specific vocabulary. Photographs have been analyzed and praised with words

neutralityigl7; *$detail, textus e, clarity of def initicn, ~xactitude, delicacywl3; and abov~all, l"realisnr, truth, the tangible presence of ~eality~~.iQThese terms are constantly used %hat Is, a machite process un~cdifiedby retouching, hand csloxrng, or any other ki~dof manual irterventioc, There is as yet little vocabulary fox the discussion of manipulated photogra~hs, other tkan to calf the& HpainterlyH.

Fcr many photcgrapkers the perfectior oL their craft has meant strivicg after thz qualities formalists mection, but the most imy~rtantand problematic of these has been the ascription of

**truthgito tke photographic image, This has meant a variety of thifigs to various photographers, but all stem from the basic idea that the photograph always starts with, and refers tc somethi~g

"out theren, ar, idea which reed not be strictly applied to even the most realistic forms of painting, except the consciously mlraetic. tfnlike paintina, a photoqraph is always of _so_geth.ii, 7 evec if distorted. It Ps partly because of photography that one seldos speaks now of painticgs in terms of accuracy, acd the chief inauthenticity in painting can only be blamed on forgery, But while paintings can be forged, there is vistuaily no such thing as a forged pkotograph - inauthenticity here is aluays the result of "tricka cr t*doctoredw photography.

Consideration of these facts complicates any attempt tc isolate the authoritative vtrutCfulr,essw of the photograph as a purely aesthetic value, as the camionplace notioa that "the camera never

1ies*'. has a number of broader implications. The precise, detailed qualities of photography justify its use in scientific research, ~edici~e,geographical surveying, archasology and anthropology, azd so on, to the extent that major hyputhesss aay he supported by little more than photographic observation.zQ The undeniable accuracy of the pliotcgraph alsc, permits its use as e~idt~cdin legal prcc~edingsand journalistic documentation. The fitrutB•’ulnesswof the camera constantly enters iclo decisions regarding surgory {x-rays, medical photography). jurisprudence if crensic photography) , military and foreign policy (aerial reconaissance) , acd retail ~arketing[advestisicg and fashion phctographyf . At the humblest level, what most p-scple still value iz a studio portrait is "a good resembhance" even more than sk illful l igttting or dramtic conpcsition,2~Obvicus3.y this literal acd sowewhat mundane realism is not the "truthfulnesst* that formalism id~ntifieswith the generation of aesthetic feeling in ac artist or viewer, because as Hudolf Arnheim put it,

The artist is rarely concerned with makifig things look real. He vaots them to come alive,.,Nowhere in the arts, except for the few episodes of extreme iffusionism, can '*to btz alive*' have meant to be like living beings - the difference between nature and simulacrum aust have always been obvious.2z

Yet if the lite~altruthfulness of pfiorogxaphy has anything to do with its ability to "come alivew oa the aesth~ticlevel, tbsn oce must deal with the inevitabl~paradox, understood by most photographers, that the truth of a photograph is itself a coctrollabfe i ilusior,. Th* making of a photograph usually involves rendering three-di~ensional objects of various colors onto smaller, re, .nTu .ser,tati~n,p~ The illusio~argquallty of ths phctcyraph is alse underscored hy comparison with fcrms of realism in painting which are not photographic, TCe aerial perspective of Japanese sumi-e, the vvsrPapping piaLes of nigh Gothic aurais, the recedi~~g colors of Hellenistic pair,tir,g are all examples of lltwo-dimsnsional repr~sentatiocsof the three-dimensional world that b~arno relaticn to pkotographic represents tioc."29

In ter~sof the original. question - how does it work? - the cross-cultural informatior? suggests thak the "truthu cf the photograph, even the con-artistic photograph, lies outsrde its

/ borders as ~uchas it does within them, naineiy in the formtiom of the '%ui?ably trained and prnpared obser~er.~' At first this would imply nothing more thas the observer who has learned to see the photograph realistically, even if by running his or her fingers around its visual contours, Unfortunately this is more a description than an explanation, and a deeper look brings one intc the middle cf an important controversy in the psycholcgy of aesthetic perception. One side of this dispute was presented by

E,i3.GombricC1s noted &rL agd_ Ilfusion (1860), which argued that the success of the illusion of realism depends on mental sets or concepts supplied to artist and viewer alike by their culture, and particularly by the artistic conventions i~hichgive precedents for encoding the world in terms of various media.30 Gombrich's tendency to sfc artistic styles as the products of conceptual schemata has been vigorously challenged by the Gestalt psychologists who put the emphasis on the organizing tendencies

of the human perc~ptualapparatus, especially its predispositian i tc structuring the visual field uith the least ambiguity possible. 1 I Accordi~gtc their research, the ifluslon works because it is I 1 simpler for the eye to see a photograph reafisticaliy than as a I group of amorphous Basses, While the Gestaltists adnit that ths I process is modified by conceptual thinking, they stress that

intflf ectualization dominates the interpretation that follows,

I rather than precedes the act of p~rception.~i

As it stands now, that contr~v~rsyis not to be settled quickly

if only because it is iapossible to experiment with subjects whose

perceptions have not been influenced by previous ~xperiencean9 corceptual reflection. The question of nhow does it work?f3 is

not to be fully answered within the current framauorks of

psychol.sgica1 research, But despite tnis impasse one can still

ask other questions about the illusioc, rryardlass of its origins. Given that it. succeeds in any corapetert photograph, one can still

ask how the illusion of realisaz comes to have sigrAficance and

value, even vhe~its primary ai~is not to satisfy the aesthetic

i inipulses. ' On first thought this requires ona to confront the

perennial question of **the iaeariiny of meaning^^, a sticky

philosophical problem with many IRetaphysical implications, The

usual. ccurse Is to argue whether the value and meaning of art are

persopal and subjective, or absolute and objective, or some writing is aevoted tc salving this very proble~. BU~perhaps, as John Dewey suqgested, the question appears insolVakle because of the very way in which It has been worded, as though subjectivity and ob j~ctivity were mutual1y exclusive qualxties, and as though tc P~~UPa phctograph meant to cocf~ran austract significance onto 4t.32 W more fruitful method of inquiry might be tc investigate the clear-cut *$meaningMof certain imagi?s with respect to some specific huaan actions which indicate significance and valuation. Thus photographs can be said to acquire very special ------meaninqg depending on their use as tccis for scientific research, as keepsakes and rnomentos, or objects for quiet and appreciative contemplation, Boreover, these meanings are rgadily cbservable ia terms of coccrete actions acd kehaviors which car racge froa use irk ac experiment to placement in a photo afbu~or auseum along with similar iaages. Certainly one of thz most explicit actiors possiblz is to verbally place the photograph into a more elaborate systern nf symbolic meanings such as a philosophy, religion, or personal aesthetic, :

The poirt is clarified as soon as one begins to ccnsider the seciolcgical problem cf the photograph as an "ideal typeH 33 in relation t~ its most radical opposites, To some extent this has hen done in ccmparative studies of photography and ~ainting,but the relatioriship there is often one of cross-fertilization. Taking a broad~rvisu, aLe finds images whose expressive gualities are far removed from the photograph's sense of realis~,its tactility,

clarity and detail: the sketching of children and schizophrenics,

~CEart of tribal peoples, and private dream syubolism. But for

purposes of historical compariscc the spitoak of non-phctographic

i~ageryin Western culture is best exrmpiified by the iconic art

cf the early Middle Ages.

The differences in both style acd technique are readily appar~r~t,In coctrast to the ~hotograph~scandidress and

spontaneity, tEe mosaic presents stylization and a high degree

of formality, shere the photograph is credinlf acd realistic, the tapestry is almost purely iaaginative, often depicting acgels,

unicorns, devils, and monsters which neveir had material existence. T~xtur?in the photograph is rendered through lightirg and

chiaroscuro, which afsc add dimensionality, but in nedieval images textuse is usually provided only by the susface or background - the stones, thread or parchment - and the subject itself may suggest csfy two diaensians. Instead of the mass of individual

details found in the photograph, medieval art tends to stafdardize

posture, gesture, height clothing and iacial expression, and it

subordinates individual parts to a centralized th~meor message.

, In place of the photograph's all~gedmoral neutrality, the didactic meacing of religious art is explicitly stated, While the

photograph can be produced and transmitted instantaneously (through

tho Pclarcid process arid telegraphy), tne constructicn c.•’ mosaics, tapgstries and ilhminatod manuscripts arc tiw- ccnsnming projects

r~quiri~gccctinual def iberation. And as opposed to the

photographf s extreae portability medieval works of art are intimatsly linked to thzir architectural surro~ndinys.3~

Having said this much, how is one to account for the differences? For those inclined to a rationalistic sxpf anati.cn

j the answer has usually been couched in taras of progress, or a i.. linear sche~rof evolutioc froa icon to photoysaphe3s But while

it is true that tho techcology of iraage-making has expanded rapidly

over the last few centuries, this does not Support the idea that

photography is a bigher, or more valuable, or evsn more natural

kind of imagery, And if the photograph cannot claim superiority

to the icon nfi the basis of expressior- or perception, thea how

does one explain its development? This would seem to be the

fundamental qussticx in tke histcry of photography, cne which has

been unconsciously acswered by historia~swho enumerate a Pist

nf Eortuitious and isolated discov~rieswhich, when added together,

produced the sodern camera, lens and photo-chemical ~rocess.3Q

This is the model of sciecce and technology which Thoaas Kuhn

iae~tified as fXadvaricement- through-accu;uulationfl, a step-by-step model which generally fails to account for any major conceptual

Breakthrough in the histofy of sciecce.37 The iaportan t advances

occur, according to Kuhn, only when the basic paradiqms of

scimtif ic thought are challenged and proven inadequate, though

this cften cccurs when indiviuual practitionars find new conceptual means for dealing with previously ixiexpiicabla data, As Kuhn

describes the^, paradigms are the broad intellectual structures which

defi~eprohfe~s and methods of a research field for succeeding generatiens of practitiouers. ,, some accepted ~xampfesof actual scientific practice - examples which ir&cludef as, thaory, application and instrumantation together - provide models from which spring particular, coherent traditions of scientific research. ThGse are the traditions which the historian describes under such rubrics as *Ptolemaic astronomy* for *Copernican1), 'afistutelian dynarnicsvor *Newtonianl) , ' corpuscular optics' (or 'wave optics'), and so on.38

Keaping this in mind, a paradigmatic approach to the histcry

of ph~tographyraises a cuaber of csitlcal quastions not even

recognized by the standard histories. Contrary to standard opinioc mrdizval society in uestern Europe was not technologicafly stagnact

during the **Dark Bges1l, ar,d the abolition of Koraan sfave-labor initiated a search for nonhuraan sources cf power which brought

forth the water-wheel, stirrup and harness, crankshaft, rudder,

hosseshoe, plough, compass, clock, vellum, springed carriage, and

\ three-field agriculture,39 But if these inventions were possible was there anything in ~edievalparadigms which precluded the develcpments that led to photography?

To answer the qu~stisnof why the Middle Ages did not invent

- pkctography and ours did, one needs to cornpare the social construction cf reality40 - the basic conceptual schemata for organizing ideas and experiecces - in both historical periods. At the risk of gsneralization it is clear that the medieval sense

of "reality" correlated with thd feudal power structures which stratified all economic, social, and rel2g;ous relaezonships in

nost cf Europ~. The ascendancy of Christian monotheisa over

ciassicaf paganisa substiauted the unity of on& Gcd acd His church

for a pantheoc of innumerable specialized deities and s~irits,

This theme of refiyioas unificatiori, already evident during the

waning of the Roman Empire, justified the prevailing social order

by deifying it as an extension of the divine cosmos*^. Reflfctiry

its basic political structures the aedieval world largely saw

itself as a self-con+air,ed and organic whole, a hierarchial system

with God at its apex, Ban at its center, and a serifs of levels

~ediatinqbetweea thorn, The visible distribution of pcwer and

privifedge that ranged amocg king, lord, vassal, serf, was upheld as a fesssr copy cf the icvisible boundaries separating God, 6' archacgel, seraphim, cherubi~,and other ange1i.c saders. The

strong identification of politics with cosmoiogy was maintained V'

#ell into the sixteenth century and even then an apologist for monarchy could write:

Hath not God se? degrees and estates in a19 his gloriaus works? First in his heavealy ainisters, whom he hath ccnstituted is drivers degrees called hierarchies. B~holdthe four ele~eats,whereof the body of man is coapact, how they be set In their places called spheres, higher or lower according to the soveseigaity of their Eatures, Behold also the order that God hath put generally in all his creatures, beginning at the most inferior or base ard asceadicg upuard.,. Every kind of trees herbs birds beasts and fishes have a peculiar diapcsitfon approp~redunto them by God their creator; so that in everything is crder, aad without order may be cothir*~stable or permanent. And it Gay not be called order except it do contain is it degrees, high and base, according to merit or estimation of the thicg that is crdered. 42

This organic cr holistic view of God and Mature fcund

~xpressionin a number of c0ger.t metaphors: she Gr??at Chain of

Being, thf cosmic dance, the divin~comdey, Ptcfemic astronomy, acd the equation of microcosm with tnaczocosm on several lavels.*3

Uithir& these systems the identity of individual beings was based, I not or, u~iqueness,but or. place and position within thf pse-ordained cos~icordur, TCe nedievai sense of reality was Fmbued with nctions of similarity, intezreiatedness, ccherence ,/' and i~tersection,all of which were iccosporated into the episte~ofogical principle of reszabla~cg.** Buch of feudal heraldry eaployed the coiwon equations of God (head of the universe), king

(head of state). brain (head 05 the body), sun (ruler of stars and planets), lion {kiq of beasts), eagle (king of birds), whale

fkirg of f ishesf , and so forth, 4" The msdieval concept of disease, acd the body-iaage of the Middle ages, was founded on correlations brtween parts of the anataay and humrs, planets, signs of the zodiac, metals, minerals, and seasons,** The same principles applied to astrology and alchemy as well as to the biological aspects of the natural order,*?

Out of all these resemblanc@s the Church created an afficial hierarchy cf truth and knoul~dgethrough which it supervised the evaluation of observaticn and experience. Medieval theologians were less ccncerned with th~laws of nature and their technical applicatio~%an with grace, salvaticr,, predestination, and above all, faith. Knowledge of earthly matters was largely subsumed under other-uordly considerations, and ail neu sources of inforaatioa were subject to censcrship by a centralized authority which could and did isolate, ~xccmmucicate, and burn nocbelievers,

Sciertific experlaentation as we know it today, without which phctography is irapossible, could riot prove anything but was forced to "save the appearancesn of a geocentric universe in which planets orbited around the earth in perfect circles, with unifom rates of motion.'"

This ciosmclogy, plus the Churchts official espousal. of asecticism shaped its policies with regard to art also, Aesthetic theory, which Hehlenistic thinkers took seriously, was virtually ignlored by wost ecclesiastics, except Tor brief periods during the fourth and nir,th centuries. St. AugusSine (354 - 430 A.D.), influenc~dby Plato, set the tone •’or ~ostof what was to follow in the Churchts doctriries with respect, to art and beauty. His tkinking is summarized in the formula, "Unity is the form of all beauty. rT*9 Things were beautiful '%because the parts are similar to one another and are brought into one concordance by a certain

~crnbifiaticn,**so These thoughts were seconded by many cthers, among then1 Boethius (c.475 - 525): "Beauty appears to be a certain concordacce of pafts was a function of numerical ratios in balance, such as perf%ct symmatry iLarchitectufs, meter in poetry, prcporticr in pairtirg, acd rhythw in music.52 In all cases, according to Buyustine, beauty is a property of the fcrms and shapes invcllved rather than the colors, textures, cr eiaotiocaf qualities.53 On the contrary, it is osly reason which cac judge beauty adequately:

I am delighted hy the highest equality, which I apprehend not with the eyes of my body, but with those of iriy mkd. 1, therefore, believe that the more wkat I see wtth my eyes draws nearer to what I apprehend with my spirLt, the better it is..,Por you see ~othingbut physical thicgs with these physical eyes: it is vith , the mi~dthat ~sssee... unity.S*

Tkeologians also arranged the appearance of beauty according to hierarchial divisions, Physical beauty was assigned a lower rank than spiritual or transcendent beauty, just as earth was placed lower than ths upper reachas of the heavens, , The beauty of a painting was therefore prized only if it referred symbolicaffy tc the beauty of an ixvisible realityml /

Visible faras are not produced and showc to us for their ow^ sake, but ase notions of invisible beauty, by meacs of which Divine Providence recalls human minds into th9 pure and izvisibie beauty of truth itself.ss

Even during pericds of relative freedoin, such as the rule of

Ckarlemagne in the sight-hundreds, art was stiff a suspect form of human endsavor, an idle type of anusrment verging on immorality. Art was tolerated and sowetiaes supporzed for its didactic purposes, "Illiterate men can cclaterttplate in the lines of a picture what thsy cannot. learrA by means 05 the written words,. .the plcture is a kind of literature for the u~~ducatedrnan."sa In other words, the Church recoqaized the valur of art ~dlier:used to convert acd indocrtinate the taasses,

But while visual exploration was suppressed mainly in northern Europe it wax this same area that kept classical literature alive ic ths monasteries, and enriched its meanirng through $$higher criticisa" or the method of termensutics.s? The interpretation of the Bible and other literature was founded on the idea that language was God" instrument of creation, and that creation was thewfore syar>nomous with ti-@ process of raming, As ir, ?he begir,r,lr,g of Genesis, God says, ggLet there be light, and there was lightf4; the first task of Adaa is to aaiae the creatures in the world around hirn.58 The gospel of St,John, drawing on mythological. references, makes the identification more explicit:

"In the beginning was the Word (&q~s), and the word was with God, and the nord was God. **59 And if language caiee from Go4 himself it followed tbat the name of a being contained bidder clues as to its ir,ner nature, Language was studied as a sf? of signs revealing God's essence and purpose. The task of hermeneutics was to* excavate these burfed taeanings by carrying all symbols to their furthest extension, by means of hierarchy acd reseablance, at ,-: -4. they should r~sclvcinto un;tf. I~stcadcf science the medieval worf d-view encoura yed those intrica te syst~msof interpretinq tha world as God's imaqe adopted by the modern mcounter-cufturefl: Tarot, alchemy, Kabbalah, ceremonial inagic, astrolagy, numerology, gematria, palmistry, etc. 60

A familiarity uith hemereutics helps explain certain medieval attitud~sregarding cumbers, letters, and artistic images,

Following the Greek mystic, Pythagoras, theologians and maxhematicians contmcnly spoke of some numbers as "meane, others as "excessivett or Hdefectivei#, and a few as lpp@rfectlq.** Even the letters of the alphabet were embedded in cosmic symbolism, as when

(c-560 - 636), one of the Church Fathers, wrote a treatise on grammar which examined the Greek fetters for their raaral significance:

The letter Pythagoras of Saws first made, after the model of human lif~,whose l~werstein denotes the first of life, which is unsettled and has not yet devoted itself to the vices or virtues. The double past which is above, begins in youth; of which the right side is steep, but leads to the blessad liLe; the laft is easier, but leads to ruin and destruction.63

The hermeneutic fraw of ~indis iaplicitly built int~those aspects of medieval art which are more symbolic than ilfustra%iue.

Eher, th8 art cf the Middle Ages did nct present nasrativrs of scenes Er~mthe Bible it deveicp~da highly stylized hagiography, or constructed alfegori2s of Light and aa~knassia which ~xplorationsct style were constfain~dby mralistic consideraticns. hhen Naturs makes its appearance here it is as allegory its~ff. Arts preach industriousness, 5fes teach harmony and cooperation, lions symbofLze the power of leadership and royaity,"4 f n tii~nrost extreme i~stancescertain byzantine theologians came close to idolatry in their insistence that imagas of Christ took or, the sanctifying ar,d healing qualities of the God-head.65 But sven when not taken to these extremes the hermsneutic method reveals the essen tiai medieval attitude to art - that it was there for the sake of reminding viewers of a "higherT3 value and meaning.

Finally sc~ethingneeds to be said about the ~cono~icstructure of artistic activity thrcugkout the Middle Ages, Duri~gthe earliest says of the Christian moveaent, befsse its ado~tionas a state religion, the artwork used to decorate catacombs and churches must have origi~atedin the donated labor of dedicated amateurs. Ths early Church could not have afforded the skills of professirnaf artists and this accounts, ic part, for the technical crudity of Christian art in its in~tialstages. Gaith the establishment of relativrly stable monastic orders the manufacture of handicrafts arid images was put on a More systematic

basis, The monasteries employed principles such as the division of fabcs and organizaticn of the day into hours for regulating

the produc ticn of illumicateu texts, pieces of scul~ture, furnitur~,ceramics, glass i+Ls6ows, acd a variety of ctber artifacts, The monks, usually members ot aristocratic fawilies, acted chieflv in the ca~acitvof supervisors and admixstrators, while the peasantry did the heavy Inbor. Courts and manor houses used the tafer.t.s of domestic servants, supplemented by those of a few wandering journeymen. IL short, there was no oEen market for art In the modern sense cf free coap~tition, It is true that this situation luoseried up during the Gothic period cf the twelfth and thirteenth ce~tunries, but ever? then artisaxis and artists were bcund to membership in guilds cr lodges which were organized for th~purpose cf monopolizing the iriarket, The system cf independent patronage did not arise until wealthy wsrchacts could provide an alternate source of incoae fro@ churches, courts, acd town corporations,66

This brief glance at history indicates that the invention of phctography was preclud~d,not by ignoracce, but by a sccioeconomic /' system which had little roow for candid, spocta~eous,detailed, realistic or morally neutral i~agery,at lsast until its inherent contradictions rsleased the return of previously repressed modes of visual expression, The d~velopmeatof visual realism was excluded on almost every level by wedeieval cosmology, idaolcgy, aesthetic thought, hermeneutic discourse, modes of artistic pr~ductioc, and organizatior, of social fife in the ccurts, churches, mcxasteries, and other certers of cultural activity.

The icherent conservatism of medieval culture in all its aspects mad& "puretf scieritific and artistic exphoration extremely

difficult, thcuyh perhaps not iapossible. But given the prevailicg

ccnditiocs any breakthrough or chalfeilys tc thcl syst~n:would havc;

meant a reaffirmation of life, of the body acd the senses,

in the face cf economic isolation, censo~ship,and axconirauriicati~t~.

This is not to imply that medieval culture was a monolithic unity ectirely free from con•’Iicts ard con traaictions. In actual fact,

the Church*s dominance was ofttn underuined by both feudal kings ar.d pcpular milfenial or heretical movements: it is aut of these conflicts that the highest ar.d ntost ir.novative examples of medieval. art came to fruition.67

The example of the Bidd3.e Ages also serves to illustrate the critical point that the meaning and siynificaece of art works and ,,'

aesthetics car be examined in terms of their fucctioris as the extension of a controlling ideology, The visual language of msdisval art acd the philosophical lasguage of medieval aesthetics

used the vocabulary of hier&rchy, resemblance, correspondance and

su bordiration that. permeated yovernmer.t, religion, econcmics and

philosophy during that era, Pro& tha monk wosking on it to the

laymar, and theolcgiar? who cc~te~ftlatndIt during the act. of

warship, th~final mezning of any single imge was always to be waluatcd ir terms of an absolute and all-encompassing system of oreanf nqs tha + touched upon every aspect of existence. Boreover, it is clear that the influential prcnounceDents of a thinker as si.licsrt= arsci ii:teiligect as Auyustin-t: accorded btith the very earthly

interests of fcciesiastical authority, no matter how idealistic their tenor or intention. The Church drew its strenuth partly

frcm the sin-laden body/mind split thinkiss like augustine

succeeded in maintaining, and from denying to human heings the validity cf their own iztuitions and pkrceptiuns urtless sanctiora~d

by dogma, The Church also supplied images which attempted to

substitute metaphysical abstraction fcr the concreteness of sensual

~xporience, and its aesthetics uere essentially a weans for

suppressing the elenents in art that hinted at immediacy, spontaneity, individuality ox personal expression, This suggests

+hat the most pray~atictest of any aesthetic is its potential to lirriit, rath~rthan enhance the artistic experience - a test which quickly reveals the defects in ~odernphotographic criticism. The Eye as Bachinery

Photography, as a graphic technique, contaics the intersection of optics, chemistry and mechacics, f3ut in order for chemistry to emerge f som alchemy, optics from pers_pectivq, and mechanics and physics frog astrology it was necessary to reorganize the I medieval structure of truth and knowledge, The ~oder~periodic takle of ef~m~r~tscould not be formlated as long as gold was r~versdas higher than lead in terms of economic ar,q spiritual qualities. Optics was similarly impossible while light stood opposed tc darkness as a cosmic analog ot truth, intellect, power, prudence, w isdon, health, love, and the beatific vision, Scierxe had to break ths great but closed chain of being and its built-in limits tc knowledge, symbolized by the apple in the Garden of Eden,

In its place came the idea of progress, the infinite sxpansion af the human mind into nature, Science, at least until the twentieth century, reversed medieval cpistemlogy by ordering the world In terms of difference and uniqut~essinstead of resemblance as3 cosrespcndanc~, The discovery of the? individual, the unit, the atow, the species and the entity was funda~entaltc the fragmented universe in which photography had its origins,

Visually the earliest indicatiocs of a major change came in Gothic art, a product of the most bourgeois anu urbacized portiors of the EiddI~kgss. Just why the towzs ok Eurcpz were revitalized at that moment ic time is difficult to aetermine, but the growth of conmesce acd a market ecocomy made its influence fslt in an art reawakec~dto the possibilities of the material vcrld and ail its i~dividuafdstails.

The urban and financial conditions of life which ' forcf man out of his static world of custom and tradition into a nore dynamic reality, into a world of cofistantly charrging persons and situations, also explain why man now acquires a new interest in the things of his irtiiaediate envisonaent. For this environment is now the real scene of his life; it is within this environment that he has to prove his worth, but, to do so, he ~ust know its every detail, Arid thus avery detail of daily life b~comesan object of observation and description; not only human beings bus also ani~alsand trees, xot , only living nature but also the hone and the furniture ' in the home, costumes and tools, become themes cf artistic interest ic ttemselves.6~

A number of political and social changes helped easE the older shackles or artistic expression. bet wee^ the years 1200 and 1400 the Black Plague retreated from Burope, thereby allovicg the conticent tc repopulate itself; the last of the Holy Roman Empire fell into lgnomiciovs cof lakse, forcing a clear separation betweer pa~aland secular authority; the Fourth to Nlnth Crusades enriched cities like Becice while diminishing the in•’luence of Byzantine cultuse and pclitical authority; Englaxd and Norman France accrued c.nkryo~.,ics9cses of nationhccd; and the growth of law and inadicine helped give rise to fairly iadependent uciversities at Paris,

Bologna, Salerxio, Hoctp+lfier and Oxfard, The intellectual climate of most of the u~iversitieswas permeated by the ratfcnalistic trachings of Ben like Ablehard, ArsePm, and Thonas aquiaas, and

the scholastic movement, with ArFstotle as its model, tcok a

decided turn against Augusticia~other-wordliness. All these

changes, which amounted to ajsecularization of basic values, -

,contributed to a dtclinr in the s%yyLe of art which cherished the

L icon as its greatest syabol.

Gctkic art also received positive impetus from two innovations

in technique and coapositioc, The first was the tiiscarding of time-consuming mosaics in favor of paiiiting & fxescn, that is,

with uater colors on wet plaster. There was mu& more urgency in

this msthod since the coloss would not take once the la star dried,

"This e~sur~da new spontaneity and freshness of painting, which was no longer flat and tvc-dimensiocal and rigid in action, but

cculd dspict movement and depth and feeling more freely and vividly

thas the scZsmn mosai~s.*~&9This change coincided with the influx

znd adoptioc of other materials acd processes suck as paper,

improved inks aud stained glass, gold-tooling, the replace~ent

of flax and wocl by cotton and silk textiles, a~dthe manufacture ~f artificial dyes and pigments, all due to European contact with

the Hoors and Arabs and all tending to encourage the Gcthic artist to experiment wleh a brighter pallette and extended range of cclors. The production of art was speaded up coosidirably, to

the pcint wbere ooe can detect the germ of the idea of

phctography*s ~fd~cisSvemomert, q*fo

The second innovaticn was also the, pesult sf commercial d~alicgswith the orient: the irtroduction of a mathematical - system whicb. ccntained major advances over the Boman methods of

+rumeration, The tvef f th certury witc~ssedthe translation into

Latin of EucZid, Archimedes and Ptole~y; the thirteenth was ir,troducod to Pythagoras and Plato along with popularized versio~s of Hindu- Arabic notation, whick simp1 ifled reckoning for businessmen, Most of these translations %era made by Greek scholars fleeing the Turkish advance towasd Constantinople and their efforts earned many of thea places in the courts and uriversities, two i~stitutionswhich began to replace the churches as centers of intellectual activity, From the outset arithmetic was closely 15nked by them to geometry, and undtr the Pythagorean star gave a decidedly mathemtical flavor to Gothic hermeneutics, aesthetics, and thzory of the visual arts. The results are dramatically seen in GotEic architecture, as in the case of Notre-Dame (started in 1163) , which uses triangulation and quadration as its basic structural principles, The architect of the &if ar, cathedral (1398) declared that, '@Art without science is not hir,gu, and the drawing-raaster of the f ourte~rhundred 's,

Viflard de Roccecourt, wrote numerous treatises on Ifthe art of drawing from nature, as taught by the science of geometry in order to facilitate vork."7l The direct application of geometrical pricciples to artistic comycsition csntixiued to live on in the Renaissance and was a working ~ethodadopted by Albrecht Durer anO Leonardo da Vinci,

If one wants to study the case of an individual artist with

responsibility for the greatest breakthroughs it vouid undoubtedly

be Giotto di B~fidone (c,1266 - c.1337). the first of the distinctly modern painters and the first to enazcipate himself almost

complete1y from the stplizatioc and syaiimlization of his Rcmancsyue

and Byzantice predecessors, A well- paid and popular painter who

supposedly wrote a satiric ballad against poverty, and who

iccreased his personal wealth through land-speculation, Giotto

belongs both to the Recaissance a@d the Gothic, though much more

to she former with regard to style and subject natter.like his

famous acyuaictances Pe trarch, Dante ana Bocc accin, Gio tto was

- active at a ti~ewhen Italian aft was securing a seiui-national

identity for itself as the Papal State fought for ~ilitaryand

political power against rivals in Germacy, France, and Byzantium, This new patro~$agefreed him from the constraints of the older

Church*s rudimentary aesthetics. Like most of the Renaissance, Giotto moved within a religious framework and his earthy love for

animals and landscape was sanctioned by the nsuly-foucded

Franciscan ord~r,which coramisso~edhis early f rescoes. His famus

series on the life of St.Francis, a samt who was nearly a

contemporary, also prcvided a topic which lent itself to

naturalistic and nonallsgorical recditiohs of cities and historical figures. Libcrated from th~duty of producing stereotypical icocs, ~icttoqspaintings give the imgrzssioz of v~rkdoc@ frca Livicg

mc,dcis instead of: abstract mental irnagzs. once Giotto received widespread suppost painting was forced out of its previous

pathways, and naturaiism becaw a driving iorco and objective until

shcrtly after the invention of photography. 72

The growing affluence of cities in northern Italy, the i~cseasinginportance of wealth ir- Italian politics, and the expanding control af the Church by financial and non-aristocratic interests also reduced priestly asceticisa. Horality and salvation

became less important the @ore the material world was taken seriously, This provided new demands for uecoraticn on the part of churches and private famili~sand opened up greater pcssibilities for innovation ic music, architecture, sculpture, pcetry and painting, Aesthetically the Hn~aissancefound its

scurces 3.z th& rediscovery of Greek and Ronan ~aturafisnwhile

still retainicg the late raeaieval fascination for &athematics and

growtry. The artist-engineer-philosophkrs of the Aeraissance

adopted this tradition and the fusion oi classicis& with

mathematical her~eteuticsled to the systematization of the visual

arts, particularly in the areas of proportio~iand parspectlve.

Aistorically both coincide with th~"creations of the same spirit

which makes its way intc the organization of labor, ia trading

methods, the credit system and dcuble-ectry bookkeeping, in methoas of gover~mr~t,in dipfo~acyand varfare,*?'3 During the Renaissanc~ ltali criteria of artistic quality are subjected tc rational scrutiny arid a11 the laws of art are rationafi~ed.~7'The raedieval wcrld had defined the qis as any occupation employing craft or knowledge; nc w painters sought to elevate thdir profession from

(scieficcs). Thsir IjrGgrata had ari ecc~onricbasis since the higher status seant emancipation from the lowly guilds of artisans, stati~nersand apothecaries to which paintecs had been relsgated like commcn tradesmen. ,Hence the conamon ayreewiint that art was a rational activity. As cne of the founders of perspective wrote,

"., .EVPT~ art and science contains certain principles, values, and rules; he who carefully adheres to thrm and applies the@ in his art attains his objectives most b~autifully,"7s

The great key to the rationalization of art was mathemtics, Leonards &a Vincf (3452 - 1519), in a statement typical of his age, and preceaed in tine and authority by the great Alberti, wrote that "th~painter should see to it that in proportion and size, subject to perspective, nothing occurs in the work which is not considered, reasonable, and in accordance with nature.'* To be

'tin accorda~cewith naturew aeant to be haruioaious, and to most painters this meant that the secret of beauty was the use sf perfect arithmetical, geometrical, and ath he ma tical proportions, 77

T~Eandhsopometric principles used by Eeonardo and others were justified cn the grounds that *'we shall have to csnte~plateand love measure, which is cotCir?g other than symmetry, for our body is co~poszdof such peff~ctlyrriaasurzd parts ghat it can be a harmonious instrument, perEect in afl proportions,f*?" Ar, icterestina and sonewhat extsemo instance of this attitude is provided by the Florentine Bcadem y, widely known fox its mystical

Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean tendencies. Founded in the first of Europ~~sleading financial centers, its guiding intellect \ excluded poetry from the arts because it does not use mathematics,

"Arts are those skills nhicb make use of the hands: they owe their precisiori, above all, tc mathe~aticalability, that is to say to tt.~abilities of counting, measuring and meighicg.fl79 The entire trend is summ~dup in Germanic fashion by Albrechrt Duren: 11471 - 1528). Durer believed that beauty had aany benefits for the artist who crfates it - V8joy, glory acd eternal fame, and at: the same time, ~aalth.*~BoHis working method was cast intc this fcrmula: "...geometry is th~proper Basis sf all pair;ting. Without just proportion, no figure can be perfect, no waiter how diligent iy it might be execut ed.*"a It is precisely because

R~naissan~eartists used geometry as a basis for co~positionthat theis desig~sare easily analyzed in term of triangles, circles, and si~ilardevices.

The invention of perspective was part of the same pattern and it is characteristic of the Penaissance that it investigated finear

hut not aerial pehspective, The discovery oT perspectiv2 and its rapid quantitificatioc are major watrrsheds in the history of

Restern art, and they had important repercussions in science and i phiiosophy. (3s a cultural. artifact pcint-f or-point perspective

was part of th~increasir-g etnpkasis cn mat;r;rialism and rationality

that separates the Renaissaxice from tke Middle Ages. As a

st andardized technique ar,d short-cut to ve&intilitude, geometrical

perspective was used to produce the esdless nuabers of Psnaissance

views and vistas, f o~erunnerscf the postcard, and established

**thetyranny of the static viewpoint, tha co~ceptioncf a static object; in a static universe8*8-2as the hallmark of Western seeing - until tho invention of photography and cinematography. Tbe basics of linear perspective far architecture, painting and sculpture

were formulated in Italy by the end of the fifteenth century, and

spread to ncrthern Europe shortly thereafter, They were discovered pf imarily by artists, and later appliea to physics and cptics,

and uni versafly acclainred as a revolut~onasydiscovery. "An

indication of the veneration for ~xs~g&&j~is afforded by the fact that it was aentioned on the grave of Sixtus IV in Saint

Peterrs together with the sever, liberal arts and philcsophy and

theology as the tenth representative of science.""3

The heightened sense of visual realism that perspective pseduc~snecessitates a specific relationship betueen painting id L:- acd viewer whichhforeigri to the Middf~Ages not because of

backwardness or lack of sophistlcatior., but becauss medieval space

was ordered arounu symbolic density rather than geonetsrical. uniformity. To obtair. linear perspective "the size and shape of +hs Zigares ant: objects., .depend exactfy ori their pssition in

relation to a definite and measuratle povrtion of a theoretical

s~e~tat~r,~+a*The establishmer.t of th~bask iirz !on which the

artist acd viewer stands or sits), the eye point and the horizon

can only succeed if the viewer is at the proper height and distacce

frcm the paintirig, (The same holds trus for photography and can

be deaonstrated if the viewer wows up to an image made with a

wide-angle lens,) As a result, one of the contradicticns of

Renaissa~ce~aturalism is that it focuses intense ccncern cn the

individual?.ty of the subject or sitter, bur only by creating ar.

anonyruous audience, the hypothetical naverage viewer" whose

participation in art begins as a location for the fcrward vanishing point-es This was not without social significance for into that

sarishiny point stepped both a painter freai from guild iiiembsrsbip,

anti a patror; whose quantification cf th~world was a mcessary

part of his dealings in finance. The precalculated acd competitive

economic individuality of both artist-producer and werchant-consuaer found visual expression riot in intuitive

free-form, but in a mathematically apportioned exactitude, Gone was the tightly structur~dmedieval coamqziWis which saw the church

as its scciaf center, and vhich declared a public holiday so that

the entire population csufd accompany an artistas paintings fro^ his workshop to the altar of the city cathrdral,s* In its place

ger.erally stocd the individualisiic merchant who r~gardedart not as a means of worship, but as a decoraeive commodity or investment, 87 The palntixg of the Recaissacce

was only possible because of the i~mecsefortuxes which were being amassed in Florence and efsewhere,,,rich ftaflan merchants Lpoked upon painters as agents, uho allowed the^ to confirm their possession cf all tkat was beautiful and dosirable in the world, The ~ictures i~ a Flor~ntinepalace re~reser~t~da ki~d of microcosm in which the proprietor, thanks to his artists, tad recreated within easy reach and ir as real a form as possible, all those features of the world to which he was attached.%s

Art has usually preceeded science in the exploration of nature acd (it was the Rerraissance pairtars* interest in tactility and exactness which Ped the8 into a study of optics, long nqfected by even ths scholastic writers, 1 The reasons for stagnation in / this discipPise included an epistemoPoyy which distinguished lug - a divine emanation - fro@luiuen, its &aterial ~acifestaticn; usually only the former was considered worthy 05 conteaplation.

Dante gave poetic rroice to these attitudes:

Pure intellectual fight, f ufilled with lave,

Love of the true Good, filled with ail delight, Transcending sneet delight, all sweets above,

That fight does so transform a man's whole bent

That sever to another sight or thought

Would he surrender with his own consent,a9

The writing on cptics in the thirteenth and fcurt~enth ceEturies had also been influenced by lslamic scholarship, for which the psychg or spirikual coaditi~nof the observer was of

fl greatest interest, Common folklore and comaon sense ha6 been concerned with the corrospondecces and associations b~tweenlighz and -the sun, strcrigtf.,, sunflcvers, the cumber 9, Hermes, goid, havks, and th~higher m~ntaPfaculties,go This outlock, rich in symbolic referecces, inhibited understanding of the physics of light and the mechanics of visioc because it precluded the basic assumptions that made tte~possible. The power of a~dieval epistemology is demonstrated by the fact that spectacf~suere inv~ntedbetween 1280 and 1285, but were not used by the upper classes until three hundred years later.91

The classical reasoning can be summarized thus. The aim_ of tho organ of sight is to know The truth, namely the real structure cf tke external world, by representi~g to our mind the shape, position and the color of the bodies which constitut~it... The introduction of mirrors, prisas and lenses., . brings inescapably an alteration of truth and these instruments make us see figures where the @aterialobjects are no% and cften make us sge them eclarged or reduc~d,inverted, distorted, doubled and colored, It IS all a trick and an illusion. All optical means must be eliminated if ue really want to reacft the truth. 9"

The modern science of optics could not begin its dr~velopment until the symbolic aspects of light wezr discarded, and the anatomy of the eye was considered apart from the sou: ard the psychology of seef~g. Bany of the schofastics had discussed the xature of light' and colcr, but their notions were usually a mixture of anciect theozles and religous doctrine. Leocardo da Vinci was gcly cce of the many artists wha assisted iz the birth of optics, dissecting the eye, a~alyzingits structure, and comparing its functior with a machine, the camera obscuxa. The caaera, like the lens, was ~ssentiallya mechanical device for producing perspective, and artists w2re interestsxi nn it because it might help pai~tingbecome a true science: as ac aid 80 drawing it soac inspired "the caaera lucida and the graphic telescope; the diagraph, the agatograph, and the hyaloy raph; the quarreograph, pronoiograph and eugraph; the graphic mirror and the periscopic camera, ths solar megascope, the ~risaeffienis~ue; the physionotrace, the univ3rsal parallel and any number of other pantographic fcstrument~,~93819 of these devices were commonly used until supplanted by photography.

The Optical Revolution

The develcpffient of modern photographic optics rests upon a number 05 interlocking foundation stones laid during the

Renaissance, Some of these were cheap paper, cjood ink and the printing press, all coming together in the 14509s, and all helpi~g to create ari interr-ational scientific comaunity by easing cctnmunication and making the standardization of illustrations possible, Hoveable type, anoth~rtechnique of mass production, allowed scattered and individual observers to conapare their own perceptions with a fixed, portable, repeatable "truthf* before them, fn this year 1543 the printing press was used to publish two books cer.trai to the sciectlf fc revolution: Audreas Yesaliusq f 1514 - 15641 ge Humani Corooris Fabrjca and Nicholas Coperricus8 (1473 - 1543) 1)g ~r;vofutionibusgzbium Coglestium, Yesali ust book, meticulously illustfaeed by artists of the Henaissance tradition, pciatsd out serious deficienci~sIn the work of Galen, the most revered medieval authority on anato~y. Vesalius also dissected the human eye in detail, paving the way for a concept of its function which was later incorprated into a aechanistic explanation of human physiology. Copernicus4 somber treatise was a reasoned alternative tc Ptofemaic cos~ology. These two books were key sources of infomation for Repler, the father cf modern optics. 9*

The lize connecting Vesalius, Coy~rnicusand Kepler also ictersec-ts with the name of Giovanni della Porta (c. 1550 - 1615). His sidely-read book, Hasia Nakilfalis (1558) was, as its title implies, a catalogue of tricks, games, magical awusements and natural curiosities, and it is indicative of the times that the fens was one of the@. ghat was of mor2 importance was the chalienge that della Porta issued to the scientists of the day to explain the well known effects of concave and convex fecses or; defective eyesight. Della Parta himself attempted an answer ir, Qg I;efrgc_uh&g (15931, the first systematic treatment of optics in modern histcry, acd the very failure of his explanations revealed the flaws in classical and schoiastic theorizPng.9s Johann Kepler (1571 - 1630) took up %he challenge a decade latcr. Kegler #s background was in astronomy, and hc uas attracted to the Copernican theory because it sinpfified the casting of horoscopes, his official occupation. {This was not ar. exceptional hope as the first European observatory, founded in Nurembfsg ir

1471, used the sundial and mechanical clock for exactly the same pusposes.) Astrological prediction was foreraost iL the mi~dcf Tyrho de Brahe (1546 - 1601), Kepler's mentor, and the one whc taught him to use instruments for precise rneasuretiient, Kepler studied for years with Tycho in order to prove his onf great idea, that the orbits of the five knowz planets could be irisccibed withip the five "perfect" solids:

1 ucdertake to prove that God, in creati~gthe universe and regulating the order of the cosmos, had in view the five rrgular bodies c;f geoaaetry as knowc since the days of Pythagoras and Plato, and that he has fixed according to those di~ensions,the number cf heavens, their proportions, and tte rofations of theii movements. 95

This mystical attitude toward geometry enabled Keplfr to answer some of defla Porta's questions by shifting the nature of the

God-term in %he study of light and optics. The mathematical regularity of optical phenomena, not their substacce, was now the proof of divine intelligence. By keepnny geometry ir, this elevated position Re ~lersucceeded in giving the first rigorous explanations of refraction and reffectior,, By stndyicy the anatomy of the eye i~ similar fashion he made significant contributions to the understanding of the retina. These two contributions, along witi., his reputation as an established rnathei~atj~s_s,paved the way for

Galilro and his telescope, 97

The story of Galifso (155Q - 1642) overlaps that of Kepler at a critical juncture in the doutfall of medieval ccsaolsgy, The authority of Arist@tlehad beer: upheld for centuries because his system was adopted by Ptofemy. But the rediscovery of other Grezk philosophers made the Benaissanc~realize that, even in its own times, the Ptole~taictheory had been disputed by such notables as Pythagoras, Afistarchus, Aeraclitus, and others, The efforts of Copernicus had been, in ~ffect,a last-ditch effort to save an important feature of Ptolr~icastronomy, the revolntion of the planets in circular epicycles at ufiifclrm rates of motion. Gafilsc was a loyal Copernican, a stance which brought him before the Inquisition, and shared Kepfer8s religious belief in numbers,

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stacds coctinually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to coffi~rehecdthe language and re~athe letters in which it is coiaposea. It is written in the language cf mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figure, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single uord of lit; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth,98

Galilee searched the heave~slike many others who, in the spirit'of Thomas Aquinas, sought 'to justify faith through reason.

Hence his spiritual interest i~:the t~lescops,frcm which he also Galileo did not iavent this instsnment cor was he the first tc use it for astronomical observation. His gain contributions were to publish his results widely and to provoke the Church into a ccnfroctati.cn with the heliocentric view of the solar system,

The telescope was probably invented at the beginning af the seventeenth century and was known in England, Holland and France before its success in Italy. Gafileo brought it tc ~cpular attrntion by publishing, in 1510, a numbar of observations made through the instruntent: craters on the moon and ~ountainranges similar to those QC earth; an infi~litenumber 05 stars too dim tokseen by nnaided vision; four noons revolving around the planet

Jupiter, Any one of these new facts would, Sy itself, hav~cast serious doubts on the ~risiotefian theory, Taken all together they were a mjor threat to coamon sense and theological seasoniny, and many inte1lectual.s refused to look through the tube, clairainy that it was the work of the Devil. The attack on Galilee was made mostly on the basis of the unreliability of the telescope but

Keplerts rapid and tiaely defe~seof tae instrument, elicited by Galileo persocafly, blunted the major weapon of the attackers. frocicallg the telescope was later used to prove the c~rrectness cf Keplerts theories rather than Galilee's, but it was still the first time ic history that an optical instrument gas coavincingly employed t~ back geometrical speculation with ~rnpiricalresearch, an important precedent tor ~odernscientific method. Once this occurred progress was fairlp ra-pid. By the end of th~seventeenth century refraction, diffraction and interference patterns had beec studied, optics was put OR a rigorous geometrical basis, the J microscope ca@e to be invented, and first: attempts were made to measure the velocity of light, At the turn ok the c~cturyNewtoa was able to publish his monunisntaf. coraperidium on O~ticks. A historian of science has written of this intense period that,

This was one of the most moaentous and catastrophic revolutians recorded in the history of science. -It_ is really armzing that so stupendous an event is practically

i-unknown. - _-_ For it leeant the ~stablishraentof a new faith, which radically altered the attituae of the scientist and research worker toward observational instru~ents. forrnerly the skeptic was uauilli~gto look through them from fear sf being deluded by apEearances. Now the insatiable investigator pushes a device's potential to the limit, seeking to obtain from it information, even fragm~ctaryand dec~ptiveinforumtion, about the macrocosm and microcosm. This change of attitude cpe~ed a boundless horizon to scientific research and progress 99

The intensive use of the telescope, nicroscope, astrolabe and campass sirnuftaneously opened up a nu~berof New Horlds for

European civilization to discover, and if space now see~edtc contain an infinitude of universes inside aach other, there was also the aptinistic befief that huaan beings could enter, u~derstand, and conquer all of theta,

Aftef Gaflfeo and Kepler the scientific rdvoluticn followed tus pathways: rationalist a@d empiricist, Even though their approaches differed on the surface, both reached strikingly similar conclusions. The rationalist approach was mainly the wcrk of Bene

Descartes 11 596 - 16501, anatomist, ~attlematfcis3i, philcsophar, m~teorologist, and optical physicist. Ever- though he vrote pr acticaf ly nothing about art direcely, his influence on modern aesthetics vould also bs hard to overestimate. D~scartes' importance regarding optics rests on Eis investigaticns into several areas, The first is +,be ~arriageof algebra and geometry into coordinate geometry, a poverf ul mathematical tool which made the computation of Leris curvature infinitely easier. The application of analytical geometry also allowed him to study rairhous in +orws nf the law of rffractisn aed te explain the behavior of asphericaf lenses, Ws ao anatobist he described the optic nerve in a way that also exemplified the change in body- image •’rota corms symbolicurn to machinery:

Indeed, the nerves can very well be compared to the pipes of the machines of those fountains, the muscles and 'their tendons tc the other various contrivances acd springs that serve to set the@ in motion; and their animal spirits tc the water that ntoves them and of which the heart is the fount and the concavities of the brah the tanks, In addition, respiratio~and other si~ilar natural and ordinary actions of this machine which depend on the course of the spirits, can be compared to the movrm~ntsof a clock or of a mill which the ilov of water can render continuous, 10%

This model of the eye as "an inanimate piece of mechanism pinned down upon the board of the scienti~t,~fi02ar.d of the hunar, body as machinery was an idea that ran directly parallel to

Repler*s invettion cf "celestial mechanic^^^,

Descartesg gr~atsstfaao is the result of his writirgs as a philosopher, even though th~seare often treated apart froa his inkerfst in anatomy and optics. A pious Catholic with a Jesui-t education, Descartes nevertheless rev~rszdmedieval e~istemology' i> by starting with "methodic doubtu instead of faith as the means to ultimate knouladye, After wrestling with the difficulties of this prcject Descartes had a series of dreams and visions which i~spiredthe concept that the basis of all truth fay in mathematics, The basic axiows of inathematics, Descartfs felt, were self-evident and irrefutable, and they satisfied his criteficn for knowledge - that it be "clear and distinct", Gsicg an optical metaphcs Descartes specified his in~axmingt

I term that "clearaf which is yrfsant and apparent to ag attentive mind, && sams jay %ha&y& See objects ----clearly when, being present to the regarding eyE, they operate uptior; it with sufficient strength,.. the "distinct" is that which is so precise and different from all other objects that it contains within itself nothing but what is clear. 103

The implicatiocs were obvious: kzowledge of a natural object, and proof cf its divine origin, sere no longer to be the result of its symbolic associations with ~thern~mbers of aa invisible hierarchy. Krowledge was to be a rational,m&thsdic, cerebral and irntsospective process of defining differences based on ',"innate fdras" (geonetrical axiorts) implant~c?by ~crdinto th~human

iritellect~ The many facets cf the matttriaf uosid usre to be */ accorded importance only insofar as they conforaed tc these

intellectual peccnceptions of their regularity and order as

defined by matheniatics. Moreover,the kcousr himsrff {got herself) was also an atolaistic cwitc,' certain only of its owr, existence / as a thinker, a detached %iwhi* f~rmulatcdaround the rime that possessive pronouns first eztered the French latiguage.fo4 It is

hard to envision Descartes thickir,y of anything else but the

telescope and microscope while writing his meditations, The fact

that peasant and pope alike could look through their %bjectives9~

asid disprove Ptoierny and Galen strongly suggests the iueal of the

wubjective observer" that Descartes helped put at the center of the scientific discours&. This is the ideal meant to counter that

of the believer who, at all costs, wacted to save the appearances,

asid even today one still hears of the dispassionate s~arct:for kcowledge, conducted with allegedly neb$rai or value-free technology, for Descartes all this signified more than just an end to scholastic authority, but the possibility of creating a uciversal mathematics that would solve all problems in logic, rat hics, metaphysics and natural sciencs. His Qiscourse on Betho&

11637) was an attempt tc start realizing that ambit'icn.

As at i~portantfootnote to Doscartes one alsc ne~dsto note a distinction hs took over frca Galileo, a d~stinctionbetween primary and secpndarx qualities later rei$teratzd by Mewtoa, and of decisive importance for contemporay aesthetics. Primary

qualities were held to be thcs~inh~rent in an object and amenable tc quantification - posftion, shape, numb~r, size, motion - while secondary qualities were thought to be subjective properties

?-- existi~gin tbe mind of the observ~ralone - cclor, smell, odor,

beauty and so on, As Galileo wrote,

To excite in us tastes, odors, and sounds I believe that nothing is required ic externai bodifs sxcept shapes, rumbers, and slow or rapid movements, I think that if ears, tongues, and noses verG removed, shapes and numbers and motiors would rewaln, but not odors or tastes or sounds. The latter, f beiieve, are nothing more than names when separated fsoa living beings. oS

The construction of a Cartesian epistemlogy ~ecessitates,

8s Desczrtfs hiaself kseu,'a view of cature ic which the pri~ary qualities @ere more "real" thac the secondary onesjand in which

all events, from stars and comets to animals altd human?,

relationships, were to be known through & series of computable formulas or numbers, Th5s ffiathernatization of the natural.

ecvironment was taken so sesiously that it generated a series of

djsputes in seventeecth-ceatury biology which werE reminiscent

of the geom~tricalproofs of EucPid: **f;nd a knwn genus of plants (whether natural or artificial is unimportaat) that stands exactly half-way between Dog's-bane and Forage. There were even

attempts to find these constructions somewhere in the vegetable

kingdom. The ezpiricist tread was ncre Eritisb iz flavcr acd rigi in acd its ~ateriaffoundations are vividly dspicted in Holbein8s famous paintirig ghg ARhassadoys (1553). Had2 for the court of Benry Vf 11, ths year the first joiat-stock companies were incorporated in England, it delatoastra tes the relationships between science, technolcgy and ecocomic power that were demacdfng attention at that [email protected] ambassadors themselves, pmbably from

Spain, Por+ugal or Italy, are clothed In furs and jewels fro^ the

Taew W~rldaard the Orient, and in the wool and silk fabric that slave-trading and textile machZnex-y made commercially available; an the poliskt3 wooden cabic~tbehind the& is a lute, one of the first instruments with fixed frets and one of the first for which standardized tablature was written; next to it lie maps rolled up tc reseable gun barrels, a reminder that both usou mathematics for the calculation of trajectories, of ships or &rujrctiles; on top of the cabinet are the navigaticnai charzs and instruments which enabled the Iberians to establish mercantif e coPocies in

S~uthAmerica, Bexico and the Caribbean, These connectiocs were not lost to the British, who caught up to Spain through the defcat of the Armaaa (1588) and cortiaued to use technology to maintaia their r;aval suprereacp throughtcnt the Elizabathean r;ra,gOJ

Francis Bacon f 1561 - 1626) was 'Lord fiigh Chancellor to Ja~es I, under whose reign Eagllana both staked out its first colonies

In North America and issued a new edition of the BibPe. Bacon was quick to realize that "Knowledge is and in fIlPg ze~ -----Atfan+is (1627) Ee described a utopia {muvou order s~olurem) made possible by the conscious application of scientific and

technological principles. As against the ratiorialism of Descartes,

Bacon believed that the advance of knowledge depended on

experirn~rtati~nand the use of inductive reasonicg, tkat is,

/. , working up froa the particulars of nature to form conclusions on .

a more generalized level, This method of reasoning had been

largely foreign to mdievaf philosophy which always began with the structural overview - God's dominion - and then psoceeaed to deal with i~dividualinstances. Baco~houpves wrote in the same country and century in which Bcbert Boyle (1627 - 1691) revived the atomic theory of Batter first annnnciated by Demcritus;

tissue seen undar the wicroscope; Isaac Haiton 13642 - 1726) strengthened the theory that Bight coasists of minute little particles; ar,d Thomas fiobbes (1588 - 1679) argued that the machinery of social organization had the individual aan as its

hasis. Thus the atoaistfc principle that natura was g ~luribus ucua, the direct contradiction of the Tricity, fay at the centas of the empiricist traditicn, a oa

BacocSs method of induction rested on the hope that

ge~eralizatlo~sabout phenomena wouf d appear if the data about

Zhw were crganized into lists or caargories; thp eorrespondances betweer it~msin aif ferent columns vcuf d suggest autoaatically, tc any observer, the appropriate feature that various characteristics Cad in ccmmon, The method never worked in the way that Bacon wanted but the categorization of nature and vast encyclopdia which woulii cover all aspects of technology, scisnce, caturaf history, philosophy and learning, Bacon himself completed ccly a small part of his design for this project but it was taken up more comprehensively by &any others immediately after him, including %he authors of the Encpclopedie, one of the leadisg products of the French Enlightenment, Bsiore this period natural histozy was

ths inextsicable ana completely unitary fabric of all that was visible of things acd of the signs that had been discovered or lodged in them; to @rite the history of a plant or ac aaimal was as much a aat-ter ci describing its klements or organs as describing the resembfances that could be found ia it, the virtues it was thought to possess, the Begecds and stories with which it had bear involved, its place in hesaldry, the medicaments that were ccncocted from its substance, ths foods it provided, what the ancients recorded of it, and what travellers might have said of iL The history of a living being was that being itself, within the semantic network that connected it to the world. 09

But after Bacon, though not just because of hi@, (the fragmentation of nature required a new and decentralized \ organizaticn of knowledge, j best represented by the flccd of dictionaries and e~cyclopedias that publishecs released throughout the eight~enthand nine teenth centuries, and which continues today ---Enc~&gpcfiia Erikansica, Icfox~atipgPlessg A~BZEZC, j%g %+!hole ----Earth -----Catalcqp, and the Sears-Roebuck mii-order catalogue, The presiding idea behind the encyclopedia, the ausaum, the bota~icah gasden and the ccllection was that the world could be regarded as a beck lyir.g at one" fingertips, and that sciecce was its Tie% method of interpretation, or its new hermeneutic. Wcfking photographers kcow this tradition best through The Focal ---Eccyclopedia Df Photoqfa~hyand Photo-m-mgex, two compertdia of empirical facts which say almost nothing about the more w~ubjectiveMaspects of creativity, 1x0

The history of optics reaches one of its gsaat heights PL the discoveries af Isaac Newton, a aan who also typifif s the assumptions, directions, methods, and psychoJogical outlook of the modern scientific discourse. Newton's ali-encoiapassing synthesis of algebra, calculus, geometry, optics, ast rocomy, kiresthetics, mechanics and theology is a suaming up of all that had gone before hi@ from Giottc onward, and a definitive end to J the medieval cspiti as an operational 8eltanschauuag. Despite

Newton Is personal intentioris his writings signified the rep1 acement J" of religion by science as the Eoremosk means of organizing and assessing the nature of all experience, and the influeace of the

Newtonian systesti today is still obvious in the fervor to which the social sciences and humanities, including philoscphy, still adherle to ~eckacisticdefinitions of "truthtg and "kno wledgel*, That

Wevton is deeply eabeddod if,our political thinking, cur Peyal system, our concepts of health, disease and insanity, and our nctions of b~autyis perhaps best measured by the failuse of his most outstandiay critics in physics - ii&isenb$ry, Pfanck, Einsteic - to lead the wsy to the formation of an alternative cosmology,

As wit& Descartes the path of r~scaschfor 1Jekitox began with math and optics, especially in the analysis of light to support a corpuscular theory of its action, Borking with diaphrams and prisms Newt02 studied refraction and dispersion, designed and built the first reflecting telesccpe, and succeeded in breaking white light down into its itisnochrcaatic ele~ents, Though Mewton himself never tried to measure light ir -terms of wavelength, partly because of his disagreement with wave theories, ths Qgticks (1704) does sugg~stthat the most qualitative aspect of light - ccLcs - could

\ new be assigned quantative values, By definicg color as a priraary ' quality Newtor! strengthe~edthe connections between tho physics ' i of light and the ~ethodsof classical inechanlcs. 5"

The sa@e sort of reasoning, extended even further, enabled

NEwtm to introduce the theory of gravnty into his system, the one unifying principle which could be used to explaio all types cf aoverne@?, from thcse cf the smallest microscopic particles to the paths sf tha planets in th~remotest regiors of the solar systErn, As with Gslileo acd the telescope, hewton did not invent the idea of gravity and many scientists "had sp~kenof gravity, levity, force, power, velocity, resistance, tendencies, sympathy, antipathy, i.mpetus, quantity of motion, ruass, the cectrif ugal force of a revolvi~gbody, and ths force cf an irnpact'"12 before him,

Strict aechanists like Boyie and Hsbbes rejected all such talk as a returs to the aniaistic "unaoved moverst4 of Bristotless urLiverse, but Newton*s religious temperment required it because, *$Itis inconceivable that icanimatrt bruta matter should, with~ut the mediation of scaething else, which is not material, operate upon, and af fcct other matter uiiaout mutual contact, "113 Unlike Descartes, who tried to reduce the physical. world to matter and motion, Mewton needed to reintroduce the concept of fcrce into physics and accomplished this by deaocstrating chat, like 1 ight, it was quantifiable according to the inverse square law. Xt was this precise matheaatizatlon of gravity that made it ac exacting ---law that applied equally well to pro jectfles, planets, fallicg apples, the moon, tides, comets, and nnay other pheaomena whose he havior seemed otherwise unconnected. By using a corebination of mathematical theory and e~piricalobs&rvation MEW~OII was able to codify the three laws of motion: th~law of inertia, the r~ Zatiolship of farce and mo~ieatum, and the symne trical. nature cf action acd reaction. Th~selaws, together with universal gravitaticr, f ortaed the backbona of physics until the discoveries of Einstein, 11 4

U?ifortu~atelyHewton did not stop there and he and his followers quickly applied these saaw laws to biologyJ psychology and aestiietics, In an effort "i oedduc fhli er.tire usrld to co~ciss arithmetic f crmulation, For Newton an& ethers physics was merely the best intrcduction to metaphpsics. esueciallv since the concept

of gravity as the action of an invisible spirit witnin matter [like the Cartesiar soul inside the machinery of the body) led back to the image of ax! all-pervadir~g divinity* By this Pine of speculatioa Newton was brought to conclude that space acd time were absolute and infinite, ref1ecting the omnipresence and eter~alitpof the Deity whc incorporatsd all existence. Far from adeoca king pactheis@, Mewton was thinking of a God who was absolute ard transcendent, uho could only be known "by his most wise and excellent cc~trivancesof Shings, ar,d f inaP causes,"* gs which is

to say, through the rigorous mental discipline of the sciences.

"And this mck concerni~igGod; tc disccurse of whoa from the -aggearances ------of thirw, does certaicly belong to Natural Phil~sophj!.~l~~As ?he ultimate creator and ground of the perfect,

mechanical cosmos Newton 's God nas so above mattGr that Hmaacuel Kant (1724 - 1804) arid Pierre Laplace (1749 - 1827) later showed that he was a superfluous hypothesis; all that was left of ) of physics expressed "reality7* were the laws as in mattematical /'i equations. God, if he had a place at all now, was no longer King , of th~Universe, but its Absolute GeoEeter. Uith the giving of Keplerss three laws of planetary mctior, Descartess •’currules of phflosophical method, and Newton's explication of gravity and

movement, the medieval. worlu-view, with its central drama of man's sin zrd rerlempticn, was shattered. As fos hat tcok its place,

the great Nevtonls authority was squarely behind the view of the cosmos which saw in man a puny, irr-elevant spectator of the vast mathematical system uhose regular motions according to mechanical principles constituted the world of nature,,,Space was identified with the reah of geometry, time with the continuity of number. The mrld that people had thought themselves hiving in - a world rich with color and ssucd, redolent with fragrance, filled with gladness, love and beauty, speaking everywhere of purposive harmony and creating ideals - was crowded now into micute corrers in the brains of scattered organic beings, The really important

world outside was a world hard, cold, colorless, silent, ( I and dead; a world of quantity, a world of alatheraatically computable sotions in ~echanicalregularity. The worfd 1 of qualities as immediately perceived by man became just ' a curious and quite minor effect of that infinite machine / beyond. Ilt

Orie wonders if Newton eves noticed the striking resemlances

betweea: the cosmoloqy of science and the reduction of use-values

(quality) to exchange-values (quantity) by a market ecorlomy: thr, transformation of land into real estate (rents, taxes), product5via.y into labor (wages) , natural resources into utilities {rates), and wealth into money {capital). A world which is '*hard, cold, colorless, silent, and deade could describe one in which

everything has its price, as well as one in which everything has

its number,

And beneath the perfect order of the geometrical universe,

L 0s alongside of it, stood a worfd in chaos. Descartes, Kepfer,

Galileo and othex astsor,omor-philosophers turned their thoughts

to the heavens while the earth around them ras rack7d with all the horrors of the Counter-Refoxmation, religious wars and wars of iibper ialism made nore destructive by military technology, the revival of slavery, the burning of dissenters by the Inquisition,

~assiveunsmployaiant an2 disruption of rural economies by capitalism, acd a variety of other upheavsls; Keplsr's research was punctuated by the arrest and threatened torture cf his own mother, charged with witchcraft,l~~If oris asks what the artists

were doing whils optics was ~akingadvances, the answer is that t ,' a few c.f th~~,like Pietcr Brueghef [c, 1525 - 1569) were recording the terror of their times ic grim and realistic detail, Ir, toms of epistemology Brueghel occupies much the saae posikicn as

Foscartes or Hewton, using the rational frame iaork of p6rspectival space for the purpose of recreating medieval allegories. In "Big

Fish Eat Little fisht.* [l5!X), a comment on capitalism, and $#The

Aassacre of the InnocentsH (1566-67) , a scene out of the Spacish war againsll Holland, Brueghel succeeded in revealing the sheer

This brief excursus into episte~ologyand cosmology - into the meaning of ~*tsu.khgg- hopefully b~ginsto explain where the , , \ ' I' why, often 1 photograph carne gross and even in its infancy, it was 1' identified with a depersonalization of artistic vision, The objectification of the eye as an instrument of rationality, aoasurement, control and technology, along with the devaluation of other sensory experiences, was part of a specific historical cc~textwhose influence is still upon us, The line that connects perspective, the eye as vanishing point, the anonymous audience, art as technique, and art as commodity, has its pafallels on many

other leveis, as with astror;orny, the telescope, the cbjective

observer, philosophy as technique (epistemology), tha universe

as mchanisn, and kraou.2cadge iis corn modity ar,d number, European

civilization was seeing flpfaotographicallym lorag before the actual

irve~tionof photography, and this raeant equating visibility with r susceptibility to quanti•’icati.cn. (The epistsmlogicaf consequences

of the optical resolution can be sumaarized by saying that the

eye became the new standard of satio~alityand knowledge, the defining pcint of #'the clear and distinctN in a nurnbrr of areas, as in the transfor~ationof "natural history" intc "biologyn,

Prior to the se~ent~enthcentury "the division, so evident to us,

br;twe&r, what we see, what others have observed and izarided down, and what others imagine or naively believe, the great tripartitioc, appasently so simple and iamediate, into Observation, JI 1'

,,--,,-,,IDocumeatation and Fable did aot e~ist,~lzoThe new Cartesian-Mevtonian epistemology limited itself to the domain of tke visible so that "observaticn, fro@the savsrta~nthcentury

onward, is a perceptible knowledge furnished with a series of systematically negative conditionsnlzl:

Heresay is excluded, that goes without saying; but so are taste and sirtell, because of theif lack of certainty and their variability render frqwssiole any analysis into distinct elrments that could be universally acceptable, The sense of touch is very narrcwly limited to thf designation of 2 few fairly evident distinctioss _---in -c;onsequens;e, $be @&ax-s.to ar, analysis parteg kxtra gartes acceptable. %~_-evexgaae;the blind Htan in the eignttsnt h century can per rectf y weii be a geoaetrlclan, hut he czcnot be a naturalist,l2P

Ir, otbsr words, tk3 current commcriplace that "seeing is

believing3' was established ar, an epistemic prificipfs, to the

exclusion of all other •’oms of knaw2edge. After 1600 herbals no locger show little men ir, mandrake foots, as accusacy in

ide~~tificatiochad becoa~more i~pcrtar~tthan artistic

embellishwent or legendary sy~bofization, As oppos9d to mediefal hermeneutics, scientific literalism created a separa%i.cn between

man's investigations of nature and naturG itsslf. Words and j " i categcriss were now treated as &siractions frog rather than ------extensions gf a particular bein y, Morwver, the technological pay-off~ for this shift were quite obvious. The slogan of the

sciect if ic ravclution igight have been, "voir, ~gvxi&g, pog~o&*',

? inasmch as 'seeing, knowing, and manipulating ware easily s'

substituted for one another. The whole cuitural attitude was

neatly suiamed up in a fa~ousstatement:

To see life; to see the wcrld; to eye-vitr:ess great events; to watch the faces of thg paor and the gestures cf the proud; to see strange thinys - machines, armies, multitudes, shadows iu the jungle and on the wocn; to see mants work - his paintings, towers and discoveries; tc see thinys thousands of wiles away, things hidden behind walls and withip. rooms, things dangerous to come to; ths women that men love ard many children; to ses and taka pleasure in seeicg; to see ana be amazed; to SEE and he instructed, To see, hut not to act; to see the woaen that men love, and not vice vefsa; s3to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures af the prcud," but not tc inake tEe conliections betveen the two of them; "to see and take pleasure in seeing,n but never t.o be cutraged, depressed, disgust&, or undetached frog what one is seeing. Though these might have been the words of a Galifeo or

Francis Baccn they actually co@e from Henry $3. LUCE (1898 - 1967), the founding magnate of the TIBE-LIFE-PORTUNZ erapir2.

"Things not seen,, ."

But lastly, the entire history of science and optics would remain incomplete without a discussion of the change in religiosity that compleaented and supported this identif cation of the visible with the raticnal, along with all the other changes it I encompassed, (the rise of Prctesrant sensibility altered the relationship of the visible to the invisible that had beer, central to Catholic dogm throughout the niddle Ages.') Historically, the severe iconoclasia of Refcrraation leaders lika Calvin {I509 - 1564) had its soots in the Gothic, especially in the ambiguities and extreme polarities between God and the Devil that characterize that period, For religious leaders of the tirae, and for many of theif lower middle-class foblovers, the ravages of the Elack

Plague, the ccrruption and hypocfisy of the clergy, the Great

Schism, and ~EEnoticeable breakdown of the feudal order economicalff ard politically presaged an end to the world such as prophesized ir; the Book of ReveTatiors, The self-destructive enthusiasm cf the Crusades, the fanaticism that lay behind tho

flagellants, Ranters, Anabaptists, Brethren of thf Free Spirit, a~ldother heretical movements, were partly due to a wide-spread sense that the Devil was increasing in power and presence, that the Prince of Dzrkness was gathering his earthly forces before the final reckonicy, Yet even before the battle between Christ and Antichrist, God was surveying the world visual1y, in preparation of His ultimate judgement. Hierony~ousBosch gc. 1460

- 3516). not atypical of the era, painted a vivid tableau of the seven deadly sins with the Eye of God at its center, and the caption "Beware, God sees." The noted Cardiaal Nicholas of Cusa (~~1401- 1464) issued a popular moralistic tract entitled 22 --visio~e ---dei, warning that it was impossible to hide sins from is all-penetrating vision, And German churches often inscribed "God

Sees!" over their entrances, The all-seeing Eye of God, looking from the heavens downward, became synonoaous with the act of judgement. 124

On tho other side, Satar, and satanic activities also had an important visual component, symbolized by the Ev~lEye, A malicious eye of envy in antiquity and the Hiddie Ages, the evil eye assumed deltlocic proportions from the tvelith century onward.

The Devil himssff was pictured as many-eyed Argus; Jewish rabbis were feared fcr the power tc lfvcl baildings vith their glances; an accusaticn of evil looks was sufficient to convict people of sorcery and witchcraft duricg tho witch-hunting mnias that began ic the twelva-hundreds; toads, snakes, cats and cShrr witches* "f arniliarsM were abhorred for si~tilarreasons, Gothic cathedrals, built with geomet~icalregularity to their structure, were topped off and studded vith griffins and gargoyles to ward off the mauvais --oeil. Charms and amulets were designed to protect pregnant noaen and young children front the sight oi the Evil One.azs

Pride acd envy also took io~satanic aimensions, Jeaft3~5yand hatred of the upper classes and merchants were behind the Peasants*

War (1524-26) in Germany, and contempt for the rich was reinfor~ed by sermons coctrasting Lazarns - the poor Ban who goes up to heaven - with Dives - the fat trader who goes to Iie11, dragged dcvn by his moneybags, Frequent agitation ar.d rising csirae rates in the slums just beginning to grow in Europe must also have ccntsibuted to the uneasi~essof the propertied classes, and this fear was symbolically projected onto the Devil and sundry dewns. Yet coincident with the newly-gained wealth of the ficanciers and industrialists, acd its conspicuous cc~nsumytion, was the movement among theoloqians to decounce pride as the greatest cf all evils.

Ic the early Hidrile Ages, ustdes: Augustinian influence, the deadliest sin of all was coccupience, the lusting after earthly pleasure; frcm the Gothic onward it was pride, Lovr of self had caused the downfall of Lucifer, and ar~ysign of narcissism or THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS Madrld. Prado IN0 21 Piml of Pridc (actual slzel excessive self-approbation partook of that original rrbellioc. 126 The chief synbol of this vanity of vanities - of the idclatry of the flesh - was thf mirror, Rirrors throughout antiquity and medieval itFmes had been small, hand-h~ld pieces of polished metal relatively unchang2d since the Egyptians first produced them, In the sixteenth century the V~netianglassblowers disccverd a rnethod

05 polishing glass and backing it vith an amalgam of mercury and tin, enabling mirrors to become bigger and brighter, and less expensive, Preachers quickly deeounced thea as "the hiding-place of the Devil ," and in a faaious woodcut a voman was shcwn preening herself in front of a glass in vhich 4s reflected the anus of a demon standicg behind her. Ccsmetics and fashionable clothing were condemned for similar reasons,l+P

It was in this frenzied atmosphere that the Reformaticn was conceived and initiated, Its chief catalyst, Bartin Luther, claimed to have fraquent cofnversatior,~with Beelzebub himself and

+WO of his mi~ions. Luther also saw the growth 02 capitalism as a fufillment of the Book of Revelations, a~dthe disruptions around him as the work of farces preparing the final apocalypse, Calvin, even Bore cf a religious extremist than Luther, was perhaps less sure that the end was at haad, but took political steps to prepare for it anyway by taking over and terrorizing the city of Geneva in the name of Christian love and religious purification. Calvin was also more of a systematic thinker arid coaifier than cther Rsformers, an2 it Fs in his urittcc word; that zn@ cas trace the major currents ic Protestant theofogy.l2&

Calvinls first bone cf contention with tha Church was the allegorical interpretaticn of Scripture. Calvin regarded ths hermereutic method as anatheaa, a method of reading the Bible that led away from what God actually said instead of clarifying His meaning. For the early Protestants fa&&& was everything and this cocviction elevated the Bible to a position of ultimate textual authority, to be taken literally, For Calvin, God was pure Truth itself and only the Devil, the Prince of Dec~ivers, would attempt to interpose between maE and God by Beans of false words and appearances, Since the Devil is everywhere, nothing can be trusted except the Word of God Himself, which is to say the Bible, In explainicg uhy God gave Ban Scriptuse, Calvin again uses the ubiquitous optical simil e:

Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be sortie sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles ail1 begin to read distinctly; so Scripture, gathering up the otherwise corfused knovPsdge of God in our minds, havirg dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God, 129

Carrying this attitude Even further, Calvin aiso applied tha q%eyatf ye testw to the Bibls: anythicg not explicitly mentioned in it 'was autclaatically prohibited. '30

The step that follows literalism is iconoclasm, arid Calvin was ~othesitant in taking it, 1 nterpreting the second comznandinent in the spirit of the letter, ar,d insisting that oil2.y '*God hisaself is the sole and proper witness of himself," Calvir, thundered against the use sf any i~agesin religion, The chapter headings of &gsrjtutes ~f Zhe Christian Refiqiom (1535) tell the er,tir~ story: "It is unlawful to attribute a visible tarn to God, and generally whoever sets up idols revolts agai~stthe True

God,. ,Every figurative roprese~~taticcof God contradicts his being,..l&ages and pictures are contrary to Scripture,,,Any use of images leads to idolatry." ".,.the Lord forbids cot only .'that a likeness be erected to him by a maker of statues but that one be fashioned by any craftmar, whatever, because he is thus represented falsely and with an iasult to his majesty.13a Even secular images were tolerated only to some extent, though Calvin contradicts himself ia this matter:

Therefore it remairs that only those things are to sculptured or painted which the eyes are capable of s~ei~g,,,#ithinthis class some ar6 histories and events, some are iaages and forms of bodies without any depicting of past events, The former have S~BCuss ifr teaching or admnitioc; as for the latter, I ao not see what they can afford other than pleasur~..,I only say that even if the use of images contained nothing evil, it still bas no value fof teaching."z

Calvin thereby gave intellectual suppost and encouragement to the more active iccnoclasts who burned paintings, smashed statues, stripped the churches of their vestements, and issued in junctiocs against the theatre, paintirg, sculpture, and almst every other type ~f artistic activity, Shere the Cathclic Church > had tolerated and used art to celebrate God and indoctrinate I b~lievers,the Protestants oppcsed it as an insult to His purely ,

/' spiritual ~xistecce.

The source nrateriaf froa which Calvin drew his fire has a fnucfi deeper background, one worth examining for a moment,

The deity of the Old Testaaent is dehovg_h, literally #'He who sees all," and whose vision is his chief syabol of control, judgement, and oainscient, nhen this Gcd first creates the world

We se&s that ltit is good** rather than feeling its p3rf~ction. The fall of Adam aad Eve out of paradise carne about nhen "their eyes were opened" and "they saw that they were naked." "The eyes of the Lord are in every place uatchirq the evii and the good,*' but

"EO ma@ can look at His face and live," One of the most common farms of punishment in the Old Testanent is blinding, and one of the most frequent miracles IS the restoration of sight to the blind. Both the Psphgg and Zke Prover@ equate God's gaze with moral assesslaent: #*For the ways of @an are before the eyes of the Lofd and Be watches all his pathsN; "The eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him, upof, those who hope for His kindness's;

"The Lord has eyes for the just.. ,"; "The eyes of the Lord are tcuard the righteous.. .The face of the Lord is against evildoers to cut off the meinosy of th~mfrom the earthbNZ33 This Past passage is perhaps the most telling, containing as it does an equatioz between vision and ~emorywhich is often repeated in the

Bible, T~Esouls of the damned in th~Old Tzsta~rntare exiled tc Sheel [Hell), the "nether world'* or tashadasw, sometimes idfntif iad with Gehenna, the valley whare idolaters sacrificed their childreo to Moloch, gcd of fire.134 In Skeoi sinners "sEal1 be utterly laid to waste and shall be in grief and their macry shall perish,"l35 or as the psaf~istsays, "kly couch is among the dead, like th~slain whc lie in the grave, w'r;otti you remeiaber no longer and whc are cut off fro@ your care."ash In the Book qf -----Eisdoa sinners justify their h~donisticattitudes by admisting that, "Even our name will be fargotten ir time, and r.o cnc; will recalf our deeds,,,fx>r our lifetime is the passing of a ~hadow,~l37

And once they do pass on their lament is as follows:

What did our: pr5de avail us? Ohat havg wealth and its bcastfulness afforded us? All of them passed like a shadow and like a fleeting rumor; likt a ship traversing the heaving water, of which, when it passed, no trace can be found, no path of its keel in the waves.,.Or as, when an arrow has been shot at a mark, the parted air straightaway flows together again so that Gone discerns the way it vent through - even so we, once Lorn, abruptly cam to naught aad had no sign of virtue to display, but were consumed in our wickedness. Yes, the hope of the wicked is like tkistle-down borne on the wind, and like fine, tempest-driven foam; like smke scattered by the wind, and like the passirg mesory of the nomad casping for a single day, But the just live forever, and in the Lord is their recoinpense,, . i3i3B

for Calvin, "that human life is like smoke or shadow is not only obvious to tke learned, but evfa ordinary folk have no proverb

&ore coamonpface than this,"139 Siailarly, the fate cE Calvinas . damned was precisely this coedition of being totally alienated or "cut off from all fellowship with God," and in describing Hell he quotes St,Paul that the faithless "shall suffer the punishment of etercal destsuction, excluded from the face of the Lord and the glory of his pober,"x40 MO wonder tbaz the eztire issue of grace and salvation was, to Calvin, an abundantly visual one,

fit the ccre of Calvin*s torturous theology was the concept of predestination. Citing numerous Scriptural references, Calvin made it an article of faith that God had pre-ordained a small cumber of scuPs to be saved and the aajority put into perdition, even before the Creation,l*a The basis or this divine election was krsown only to God himself and the justice of th% irrevocable decision sas SO abscluta that it could xot be puesticned by mere human beings, nor was there anything they could do in this 1ife to alter ft.142 The net effect was to create a "coamu~ityof the invisibly electN whc, on the basis of super•’icial appearances, rere not to be disticguished fro@ the sinners around them, In fact, the elect *8wa~~darscattered ir. the wilderness ccmmon tc all, and they do not differ at all from others except that they are prctected by God*s especial mercy frcm rushing headlong into the final ruin of death."l*3

The concept of predestination raised two practical questions which Calviz anticipated and tried to settle. The first was the problem that if the elect were inviolately chosen, there could - be no barrier to keep all men froa si~cing,since both the damned ar,d the choses, would go to their separate rewards ragardfess of earhk3.y actions. And the second abjfction was that the invisibility of election was a constant source of doubt and anxiety te all who wanted so be saved fro@ damcation, To the twin ckalienges cf fatalism and insrcurity Calvin replied that the recognitior, of God's ata jesty, even as revealed in the plan of predestination, made it encumbent on all to live ic a manner prescribed in the Bible, and cultivate the aoral perfection that befitted a Christian, This meant, first, accapticg the gifts that

God bestows in this world despite its vain existe~ce: "If we must simply pass through this world, there is no doubt we ought to use its good things in so far as they help rather than hinder our course, Thus Paul sightly prsuades us to use the wcrfd as if not using it: and to buy gocds with th~same attitude as one sells them.t+l** Second, all ~usttake up the burden of the cross, striving after the virtues of "abstinence, sobriety, frugality, acd aoderatioc," and avoiding *#excess, pride, ostentation, and vanityfHl*s theseby emphasizing the "econonric virtuas3' - the kind that made for successful bnsinessaen, often recmmended also to the intellectual, And thirdly, all must takc; up a calling since,

"Those whose wkom he appointed beforehami, he alsc called; those whcm he called, he also justified,**a46 Uclike Luther, uho saw capitalism as the instrumect of the Devil, Calvin taught that God bas appclnt~dduties Sor Every man in his particluar way of lifs, And that no one raay thoughtlessly transgress his limits, he has named these various kinds of living flcallingsT9, Thecefcre each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a scrt of sentry post so that ha Htay not heedless1y wander about throughout life.,. Fro@ ttis will arise also a singular cocsolation: that no task will be so sordid and base, provided you obey your calling in i+, that it will not shine an4 be reckoned very precious in Godts sight,%47

But ultimately justification and salvation cam f rona one thing alone - faith - the grace tbat God imparted to all the chosec to dis~eltheir doubts and anxieties. In Calvin's ow& thought wordly success was not a sign of election, but the faith that made a calling a fom of spiritual fufill~entwas the signal of "things cot seen, but hoped for1*. In later Calvinis~,which aegen~rated considerably from this stand, success in the calling, the net effect of "good works" done according to virtue, took the place of this signal, According to flax gileb~r, ll,,.however useless good works laight be as a means of attaining salvation, for ever, the elect remain beings of flesh, and everything they do falls in finitely shcrt of divine standards, nevertheless, they are indispensable as a sign of election, Thsy are the technical aeans, not of purchasing salvation, but of getting rid of the fear of daalnation."-i+B and in its final versio~:, the kind adopted in

Britain afid transferred by the Purita~sto Baerica, it was sucdess alcne that firally mattered. Thus in its assimilation of economic life with religion, Calvinism fostered the merger of morality azd bcckkeeping, ar.d the reassurance of election with fiscal profits, thcse invisibl~and abstract signs of salvation.

Summing up, the heritagc of Calvinisin included fiteralis~,

icouoclasm, s hatred of acything even sugg~stingidolatry, and

a series of warcinys against withdrawi~yfro@ the world e~tifeiy

or taking it too seriously either, The ambivalence of Calvinism

ahout wordly appfarances is illustrated by two persistsnt exaaiples:

the continual co~troversiesover church vest~ents, and over

personal clotting. Tn the foraer case, Calvinists had to try to

walk the thin lire between avoiding *%o&anssh idolatry" ar,d failizg \ tc glorify the Hcuse of God sufficiently, In the later, they had

to tred anxiously betweec no apparel at all, which led to nakedness

and immderation, and clothing which was too costly and

ostentat ious.149 These disputes, trivial as the y. ma y seem today,

were iaaportant outgrowths of the basic Protestant dilemma: that

of beifg in the world but not of it, of avoiding the demons cf

sloth and dirt and laziness through the work ethic, while trying

to resist the temptatior, of indulging in the fruits of one's labor.

As a sidenote to Calvin it is interesting that the Furitans,

who brought Calvinism ts the New Horld, were enthusiastic su~portersof scientific inquiry, and were the liberal humanist

founders of icstitutions fik~Harvard University, The Puritans

condoned just two activities as appropriate to the Sabbath:

reading the Bible and performLcg scientific ~xperimentation.

Calvin ki~~s€Zfcailec? science cia gift froa heaven," and it is THE FIRST BOKE O'F

b&pntng and THE dy9VAEqT. grncraclun of thc crcatutes. as E in efJ:NdecLtretl? thr thii.~p,al~rcl,tare here rl~iefEyto Le coq7dered: Firn,tl)nt tlJe Mwmlde ep all thin,p tl~ereinwerecre.zted Ly,god,@ that matz beinz pl.zc.eAin thr,xrmt taber- ndeof rhe worfde to be!:oldr gods aonderf;il -wor+ef,~topraiJrIIM Tzmrfir tl~eii,ij~~itrgt.rre~,~fi~- renitb I?r kzd endued bim,fil wiJq.ly t;om ~odtAm?c,~l,di/oLrdien~r:who pet or wowtle mrrtir3 fh [die rejlorr'd him to l,F, 0 co:fim;d Aim in the Jhe by hit prome>of Chr$ to corn?, by -whome l~~ejhaldrouerromr S~t~n,drdandhel.Sec.ondr(y,t/~dt the w;~+d,vt)m;nAeF[ of god~rnoj?e~~c~l- lent Leyl2espmnrned pi1 its their wit +d:res,e fi rr:li~!zmo,& horni:+ fiom fin.ne to.Gt~rze,p~~~,~- 4::i God(w1:o ly 11i1 prencl~zr~c.d!edthrm contirmai~to rrpntnnrc).*r 1e;gtb to drjtroyr r11e wboL a P;,Rbzlorc "F tha;?II ~;rl~ir.T~'~ird~,l!rcjT>retl~ VJ by t1)erxnmplei of ~n'/rr~1lri;m,ii',.i;;.,i~z~:$6~&-the rep of~rbe 'Pa- i TIIXS(cutm- ce rr lo oft re- anie crrmre trzar+c.i, tl~.rtb:$ mercies treuer f:de them, w/~omehr 1h$th to be IJM ~l~rire!,, aud to p,.of;fi peatrd.to 6g.l WAS, Coil ma- dc henup,, Tame in eartl,,but ttn2 tl~irafi~dicirs and perj2cuciom he errer.~fiiRrtl~tl,rm ,/cn.leih eomflrrr, defit allj. his cre-ma- earth of no; 6- delicterr;t'rtl~rm.And Lec.u{r t1:e ~~~~i~~~~ir~,it!rre.~,p:cfir~~.~cionnndfi: r.elj= t1,rrrof m~htLr 3t,,,s to rerue thing. ?/;1l 33.6.bonrly altribared to ~o.d,&oj&jbrweti~!,y tl)r ex.rmp/er of ;,, > vpon thk depc, &the r4 CAnd God Caid,*Lct there be k liglltes !I rrr and Tea- thercfn" -' muff not arrri. spirit of GO^. mowd in the fifmarnent of the hcaurn, to1 fipa- ??; v,,r, bore that 9 vpon the waters. rate the daieftom theniglrt,&lct them be iimcnn.1 the crermres that Ire God? in- J Then God faid,*Let there be.light.: and for I;gnes,and for feafons, and for daies 6.. ~~:F~c,'fe~,'~ ftrnm:nt.. and yercs. mall iudgeth npperre* there light. bjf his eye:hr ncth ro God. 4 And G3d ftwc.7.11ghtthat it wag pod, 15: And.letthem be for lighies in the firina- CIS thcrnuorrc ]!Tlrc day. Tfil.,,,6,6 . and God Rparatcd the light front' the ment,of the heauento ginelightvpd the p~mereir let. ttitSarur- tiir 1)6;r:iere.Io; darkenx. earth.and it was To. ?us. rrgj,,~,. 5 ,And God called the light, Day, and ttit 16.God then made two great Ii~htes:the ~u~~$"$~t,

OOr,@r~sdid~rvrr &ayre. - darkenes,he cnllcd N,ight.llSo the euenig greater light to rule,thc die;& the lefl'c :;:;F;;;y;:: FA'S tttc rcrg and the mornmg were rile hrlt day. light to rule ?.nighti'he'tde alfof itarres. 9 lime,^ tir- ritun from th,Fe9wqtcrs 6 . TAgaine God Gid,*~Lctrherebe a"fir- 17 ' And God fet them in the firmamen.cof uetOn'"vre. @hatare in tl-c Iire.j1.3r. mamrnt in the middes of thewaters :and the.heiuen,to fliine vpon the earth, + ,,A~. clond~r.which let it fcparatcxhe watcrs fiomrhe waters. IS hhd to "rule in the hie, 2 in then'ight, P AS fi~h md vpl~olden w yneswhirh by Godq pow- 7. fl~Jc.iw~mme er , left Thcn God made the firmament, & par- and to fipa,rrte the light from the dark- oucr- fidde ted the wdters ,which were f vnder the nes:and Chd Ciwethat it was good. ~~~~~&oaj, wheln1c the firmamclit, fiom the waters which wt9.e 17 1) So the eucning and the-rnornmg,wcrc af~. worlde. ''Eh fkt of' Tfil~gg,~*above thefirmamrnt.and it.was 6. thc fourth daie. ,I,C~~~.,~~.~,C. g That of.rheiv the 8 And God called the firmamcnt,g Hea- 20 Afterwarde God fa.id, Let rhe witers ;10$:; :$," ?ym, and ill 7 So thc euening and the morning b~ingforthein abundice euer;e ~.crepingbothe one be- I< abouc ve.. , gtnniarg, whc~. thing~thar~hathc"life : & letthe foulctlir rein r c re thar , , wcre tA e fecsndc day. 7fi1.33.7. 9 God faid againc ,*.Let tlicwatcrs vn- vpon thc carth-inthe "opch firinamcnt of'nacerew~erh. phie to Cuds 6f9~2. &r:the heaue begathered into one placc, the heawn. wtl, foralintt- 11 So thlr rc re ir ,r tile ,,- & let the dry~larrd appearc.and it was lo. 21 Then God.created the.gttat whales, & :helorrc ar ,$ the~mall~ OIIC ;iyd~~z;:,:~ And God called the dryr lmd,Earth, c9c cucrie thin3 liuing B mbtiinp,& thc~wa- to nit ahour: tlhltmakrth he called 9 gatltering togcther of the WI- ters broghtforche in al'~tndance,acc6riii~$~h~~~~~~ mrrh Frwctuf: iwrlnmc bi- whicl,el% ~C~S,SC~S:& God Iawc that it wasgood. to their kinde,& cueric fethered foule ac- tllrallr is b~- Then God faid, 1) Let the earth-budde cording'to hfs kindi : S( God fawe thht it :.?:,','::.: rim. was good. 3.1. Icdicativs that tEe cou~tsi~sIn whicf; the Reformaticn ff ourisked - Britair,, Germary, Holland, Sweden, Svitzsrland, America - are ttose ln wklcb optlcal znstruments such as the telesccye, nticroscope, cemera obscuya, cavigational aids, printing press and 8'- other ~xtezsicnsof analytic vision had their greatast developments, and which led the vcsZd in photographic optics and technology well into our om century, 1% is noteworthy as well

\ that the archetypal symbol of modern capita1i.s~- the Americac dollar bill - still employs the Eye of God as one of its prominent symbols. 150

Having now traced the disintegration of medieval religion, cosmfogy, epist~aology,and acco~panyingisagery, one is still left with the task of assessing this change in terms of sxp~rientialdigleasions which are still with us. The difference between medieval and modern cultures is f requentf y described as the shift froa an oral/aural society to an eya-minded one, and the tra~sitionhas been treated by ccmaentators Pike HcLuhan as a redistribution ia the balance of the sense-ratios; WcLuha~ compares this process to the increased sensitivity $0 scund in those who lose their eyssight, but in reverse, and has suggested that increasing refiance on the eye fcr information necessitates a closure of the other senses, leading -2;o their cu~trbingor a~aesthesia,15% Bhatever the mesits of &cLuhanSs yene~altheories, this particular thesis begins to make inore sense ~xpesectially when linked to the Freudian zotion of rEpresslon as fcrgetting, as amnesia and loss of awareness of the body. lsz This specific theme has been studied in some depth by Ernest Schachtel, a psychcar,alyst who cbsesver! c hacges in ssnsa-raklos f rca childhood to adult aaturity:

Phylcyec~ticalfyas uef l as ontogenetically the distasrcg SEES~S, sight and hqaring, attain their full development later than th& ~roxi~itysec~ses, smell, taste, md touch, Sight and hearing are wore highly differentiated and Bore closely linked up with the human mind than s~e91,taste, acd touch. The latter senses, especially smell and taste, are neglected and to a considera bls extent even tabooed by Western civilization. They are the animalistic senses par excellence, ls3

Schachtel also noted that "both pleasure and disgust are Bore intimately linked with the proximity senses than with the distance

The pleasure which a perfume, a taste, or a texture can give is leuch more of a bodily, physical one, hence also more akin to sexual pleasure, than is the more subliae pleasure aroused by sound and the least bodily of all pleasures, the sight of stmething beautiful, IS*

Vision, according to Schachtef, is not only a more detached mans of sersation than any other, but it also involves the least a~ountof risk during interaction with an environment, and the highest degree of intellectualization. Vision is "Less immediately related to its objects than the proximity secsos of smell, taste, and touch, aod sore influenced and aoulded by the categories of the mind,lss This aakes vision more amenable to standardizaticn and stereotyping, and easier tr fit i~toculturally-sanctioned schemata cf experience: it saems easfer to convectior,alize tastes in pai~tingacd photography than tastes for food, or preferances for certain; ~dcrs;, sicce the latt~rare more personal, idiocyncsatic, or subjective, Visual st iftiuli also SBEB more prone to tra~slatior,and reduction into words and nurnbgrs thar, tastes

3rd odors, both of which resist abstraction and

Tte critical dimensicn of Schachtelss findings is that while the biological development of the human infant leads tc greater dependence on distance senses, certain cultures - notably our own - hasten cr short-circuit the process unaecessarily,

The proximity senses, which play such a great role in relations between acitaafs and, if zot repressed, in the sexual relations of man, are otherwise tabooed in interpersonal relations the more a culture or a group tends to isolate people, to put distance between them, and to preveat spontaaeous relationships and the "naturalw aai~al-likeexpressions of such rela tiocs, The emphasis an distance and the taboo on snell in awdern society is Itnore outspoken in the ruling than in the labcring class, distafice being also a means of doinination and of imposing authority,l5?

What acLuEan labeis a historical change in the equilibrium cf the senses due to technological innovation, Schachtel would describe instead as a cultural shift away from the proximity senses in favor of greater rapression of the ~astincts, Although

McZuhan9s ~otionof technologically-induced nafcosi s has strong affinities to Schachtef fs concept of the reprassion of pfeasurabl~ and vivid stimuli, pyschoanalysis would locate that repression

not iri technology per se, but in the quality cf icterpersonal rfiat~onsh~psmade available by a specific culture. The scientific

rovolutioc, with its enorxnous e~phasison vision and

intrllectualization, would theretore represent a higher level of repression than any knoun previously,

The historical evidence seems to coxnf irnt this interpretation, Between the late Hiddle Ages and the Reforrraa%ion them were deficfte ckacges in pat-rns of socializiug children. In Holland,

Britain, acd later Germany, where optics, mechanics, capitalism and Protrstantism flourished, childhood amny the upper and middle classes was generally c'fiaracterized by sensory acd emotional d~privation, Hany pareats during the seventsenth and eighteenth centuries acted indifferent1y to their off sprisg , lived physically separated from them, or abazdoned their infants tc institutions . ar wet-nurses, Yhen adults did express ac interest in their childrenrs upbringing it was usually to insure sufficient - and more than sufficient - discipline, Izfants were tight1y swaddled to restrict their motor activity and as they grew older children were f~rcedto wear halters, stocks, and irori collars. After a certain age many children were denied the companiokship of pets, and their daily routines included cold baths (oft~nfatal), bland dietsi and a r~gime~~tedprogram of execem+, sleep, feeding, and bowel mcvements, Education stressed the three 8's arkd a fourth In psychoanalytic terminology this sort of childhood best prepares Inrants ror onE thlng o~~y- a thOrOUghly neurotic adulthood, Psychoanalytic studies of the Beformation, the

Protestant work ethic, the lives of Calvin, Luther, and othol: religions leaders, generally wind up usirg the words ncompulsive-obsessive personality," jtana1- sadistic ckaracler,"

"the authoritarian personality ,** and so on. as9 The ccmmsc thread is a terror of repressed e~otions,anxieties, and hostilities, which can be manifested as ritualistic attention to detail; perfectionism; meticulous claaaliness and precision in measurement, spelling, punctuation, aau classificaticn; a fascination for death (corpses and preserved or stuffed aniimls); and ac aabivalent attitude toward authority uhich invslvas identification, submissioc, obedience, and jealousy and envy also. l*Q Th~sequalities surface in art as well as technology, as can be seec in the realistic Dutch paicting of the seventeenth century - their sole in shaping photo graphic aesthetics will be exami~edshortly. For the rneiasnt it suffices to aake the ccnnections between repression and technology which is brought home by ace of the irngortact but unpuklicized fcotcotes to the scimtific revofution, camely that its major tiyures - Descartes, Kepler, Galilee, and Newtoc - Mere all orphared or abandoned by their aothers during their infancy or boyhood. It cannot be mere coincidence ?.hat the new cosmos they described was lacking in materraf, cutritkve, sympathetic, warE or hospitabla qualities, except as seccndary and wholly psychological efcmsnts with co

''0 bJt?CtlVeV' (?XiStGnCe. 9hc Aesthetics of Rationality

Th& wholesale applicati~nof geoaetry to all ~aturalphenornzca did not stop at optics and ast~o~oay,ana coccepts d~riv~dfrom classical physics were transferred directly and iradiscriminateiy into areas ~f political sciecce, political economy, psychology arid aesthetics, The ntathe~laticalaxicra that "the whole equals the sum of its partsw reappeared in eightesnlh and nineteenth-century theories which stated that social orgacization did not proceed frotn above [feudalisn) , but from an aggregation of many separate individuals (housseau*~**social. contract", Lockean and Jeffersonian democracy, Hobbest bellum omqium cDntra @us),

The uninterrupted and smooth uniformity of Mewtonian time and space suggested a uniformity in nature and kuman nature, that became a corcsrstone of botany, zoology, geology, history and anthropology, The study ot forces ir. motion without segard for final purposes produced the concept of cause-and-ef f ect which found its way intc ecoslsrnics (supply and de~and),politics (action and reaction) , and a behavioristic psychology (stimulus and response).

Since this is still the dominant vocabulary and world- view of the natural. and social sciences of our day, oae wcufd expect to find siailarities in the realm of aesthetics also. All things considered, it is not toe surprisi~gto find the essence of modern photograptic criticism in th~intellectual discoursz of the eightrecth century. 161

A brief glance at the institutional settinss in which these ideas were germinated and published gives one somk insight into the class origins of modem critical activity, In France the

formation of a standing prof~ssionalar5y deprived the feudal aristocracy of its military ranks and honors, This, and the growth of Paris cocmercially, generally led to a move toward the city and the evolution ~f salons as centers of social activity, and regulators of taste ar,E fashion. The salons sere also opm to select aeinbers of the bourgeoise, whose Pinancial support was vital tc a class which coald or uculd not stoop to earning its own

living, Th~seearly discussions about art sere therefore characterized by relatively little pbFlcsophy and a great deal of wit, as jousting witb words - bpg mts, puns, epigrams - replaced the more physically violent means of proving the nobility of me's heritage. Exclusive as they were in their cwn terms, the salons were consideraf?ly sore libfrai thar. the monarchical courts which,as political instru- wents, were the headquarters of a centralized, absolutist, and bur~aucratizedstate government to which even the Church becaw subservient, With the founding cf the Eoyal Academy in 7648, and the constsuction of Versailles under Louis XfY, the state tcok over effective co~trolin all areas of artistic activity= the educatioc of artists and craftsmen,

~CEassignment of pr0•’~~s~af--~~1xiissir~ns,the elevation of \,\ particular artists, the sale of their products, and the standards of judgeme~t and apprcbati.on, The statE itself becam orgacized mere and more around the lines nf a hn9e mercarLi;5f~ccrpnrarinn= monopoiizfcg every aspect of sccial lire so that it beca~ealmost iinpcssible ts avcid conformity with those standards. The Academy, whose chief was lithe l augiver of Parnassusga, ccdifiad the standards for & y=ande rnaciere, & &g qouz, and fa belle naturG of F~?Rc~

Classicis&, and had the political powes to enforce them, Their criteria for judgeme~tare a mixture of aristocratic self-control ard deportment with middle-class rationality acd the scientific method QZ analysis. t62

In england the route to prescriptive aesthetics was somewhat di ffer~~nt,though the end results were similar, The civil warsi which weakened the monarchy and strengthened Parlia~ent,fed to a greater blecding of class interests, Court life was not excfusively aristocratic and the upper classes, aainly a rurally-based squirearchy, took active part in the axgansion of icdustry and commerce. This squirearcby, along with the urban bourgeoise, was the first mass aarket in tera-is of a reading public, a status which parliamentary government helped foster. High social life was organized around the political clubs of London, which engaged in active campaigns of literary propaganda, and in which aesthetic questions were hotly debated. Again, the growth of state pcwer, its encroachment into all spheres of private life, taste and isorality, coM5iHorace, tuo spokesmen Psom earfi9r imperial cultures,

The most important Ldea to come out 09 this gestalt of intercoacected concepts is that of aimesis. The ~imeticthecry, ir, one fcrm of ar-other, has cvershadowed Xestesn thinking about art since it was first elucidated; it is a logical consequence of any ide~tificationof vision with reason, The subservience of aesthetic judgement to epistem@isyicai considerations begins with Pfato, who siniultaneously glorified sight as the highest of the bodily senses and claimd. that art is a aiirror of nature. Plato's coridernnatiori of illusiociseic ar-tists - band of imitatorsu - and their banishmc~tfrom the ordered csmmunikg of the ~epublic, underlines the mystical aad metaph ysicai core of his conception of aslimesis. For Plato the world itself is a divine ucrk of art, ar?, image, and a material ireitation or representaticsri of a higher: spiritual reality#) into which only philoscphy can penetrate, That art is an iaitation ~eant,for Pfatc, that it strives for fidelity to the essential &deal of the physical world, which exists beyond ccrporeal appearacces,

for Aristotle, whose Poetics helped carry the concept we13 in to the sevsc teec-hundreds, mimesis was atore of a naturalistic 4 phenomenon, '(Iaitd tfz %---r;atural to mar, from. childhood, cne of his advaatagfs cvcr th@ icv~ranimals being this, that he is the aost imita+ivf creature in the world, arid learns at first by lmrtat;on.m For Arlstotie, whc mlstaKenly dkscrlbed the optlc nfrve as part of the brain tissue, the cognitiv~element in art vas the basis of ies appeal and value si~ce,"to be Ifazning - - sumthing is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind, however small th~ircapacity for it," and "the delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time learcing." Aristotle used the principle of mimesis to catsgorize the varicus types of poetry and drama, judging them accoraing to the moral elevation 05 thsir subject ~atter, The tragic and epic were given top hoaors for being #*the greatest forms of i~itation,~in that they dealt with the noblest personages and emotions, Thus tke idealist trend ic Plato's thir-king was extended, beyorid ~etaphysics,to an aesthetic based cn the highest le v~lsof mora 1 behavior. 163

In the Bidrile Ages tffimesis as an aesthetic doctrine was secondary to the ~ugustinianbelief that all things tend toward

God, and that the proper aiw of art was therefore not iaitation but beauty. Ouring the Gothic this attitude begac to shift, and by the time of the Benaissacce it completed its rev2rsal. The claim that art was a form of intellectual knowledge was crystallized by Leo~ardo,Afberti, the Florentine Academy, and the Humanists. &itatio in the R~naissarcegas a program to r~claimfidelity to the ancient mcdefs ct artistic psrEection,

and to the models of perfection provided by nature. Using the laws of nature - proportion, perspective - painticg especially wes to reproduce, in idealiz~dform, the wofid of appearances,

As Lecnardc co~mented, "That painting is most ~raisescrthywhich cor.forms most to the object portrayed,** In his own ti@@,afid in

tke decades afterward, this was understood to mean that the artist must net slavishly copy nature, but sel~ca:from it tfacse portions

most worthy cf representation. Imltatjo was the philcsophicai

articulation of thd Renaissanc~artists8 interest in optics,

aratcmy, anthrepoiaetry, and instrurrtents like the caggg lucida

and camera cbscura.

Imitation was also one of the aa jor foundatiots of classicism

in all the arts, cot just painting, though the tywg d'oeif szyle

favored by the French Acade~ywas its strongest manifestation. Classicism, which later haraenfd into acade~icism,was imported into Prance from the painting cf Italy, Its emphasis on an art strictly governed by rules and reasons, and chiefly dedicated to the ordered study of nature, appealed to the phi2osophersl struggle against Basogue and nanrikrist emtionalism, for & crrang siecle, during which reascn was epitomized by science, a mimetic theory of art was vital to every aesthetic, and it was push~dto the limits, Rimesis was the singular and central concept in the creation of th~;system of the fine arts, that divisioa of labor amcng the^ for~edfor the benefit of aesthaiticians, co~naisseurs and ccllectors, which assigned to painting the job of replicating nature vithout distortion. The most ink huential thinker of the period, Abbe Batteux, vbo ictroduced the sysaem, published a

Landmark essay on BFaux ~sts~gQ&&g g ug #eae Principle

I7 JQ7), tkat of imitation, Folfcwirg Arzstotie directly, music was said to intitate the sounds of nature, th8 theatre to repr~sent human actions, and so on, and all non-~mitative activities such as cooking, gardening, pottery and even architecture were excluded from the original system, The conceptioc of aimesis as the key tr the beaux ayG was picked up u~questioningiyby Montesquieu,

Diderct , and the Encyclopedic, and re~ainedpractically un chaf lerrged until the art-as-sxpression thwries of f ater

Re inanticism. a** As such, the significance of iaimesis in modern thought deri~esmostly Eroia the epistemological modzls of represectat for. developed by science: *'a aeticulous examination of things themselves for the first time, and then fa) transcribing.. ,ir, smooth, neutralized, acd faith•’ul uords.~'~~s

TEe priociple that art should be a precise but elevated nap of reality is consistent with other intellectual efforts aimed at reducing the world intc a series of clearcut words, numbers, formulas, diagrams and bluepricts,

It seeas mcre than obvicus that the bulk of photographic aesthetics has been founded on either affirming or n~gatingthe idea that the photograph is or should be a reprasentation of reality, or a g8iiiirrorof natureH. Oc the uhole, those who agree

wltFz the former have held suay, especially during the first few

dec~dssof the photograph's existence, The miiwtic theory was cl~nrlyevident ic the first official annoucement of Gaguerreqs invention:

M. Baguerre has at length succeeded in discovering a process to fix the different objects reflected in a caBera obscusa, and also, to describe, in four or five minutes, by the power of light, drawings, in which ob jfcts preserve their mathematical delineation in its most minute details, and in which the effects 02 linear perspective, ard the diminuition of shades asisicg from aerial perspective, are produces with a degr~eof nicety quite unprecedente&,..Draughtsmen and painters, even the ~ostskillful, will find a constant subj~ct cf ~bservationin this most perfect r~pfoductionof cature, '66

Pcx Talhot, Daguerreis rival and irventor of the cafotype, also boasted that **one advantage of the Photographic Art will be, that it will enable us to introduce iato our pictures a multitude of mitute details which will add to the truth and reality of the re presentation. And %dgar Allen Poe expressed his enthisiam far tke new process: truth the daguerreotype plats is icfinitelp Bore accurate in its representation than any painting by hurtiarz, hands.. ,the closest scrutiny of the photographic drawing discloses only a more absclute truth, more perfect identity cf aspect with +he thing sepre~ented,~lsBTBe mutual reinfsrce~ent of photography and Bisetic theoray was so strong that Charles

Raud~laire,me of the r?ew mediurtt's earliest enemies, was moved to pour cut Cis wrath or the discovery by satirizing tte popular public attitude:

I believe in nature, and X believe only in caturg. I believe that Art is, and cannot be other than the exact reproductioz of nature.. .Thus ac industry (photography) that gives us a result identical to nature would be 'the absolute art,. ,since Photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire, then Photography aad Art are the same thing,t69

Prcbably without knowing it those photographers and critics who have been most concsmed with preserving the purity of the unmanipulated inrage have based their credses on some variety of artistic miaesis. Paul Stracd (1890 - ),one of the fcremost ptctographers in the history of the medium, once wrote that,

*iPfiotography, which is the first and only important contribution, thus far, of science to the arts, ficds its pjaq g'qtym, like a11 media, in a compfet~uniqueness of means. This is an absolute ucyualified objectivity, And Edward Beston I886 - 1956) declared,

1 am no longer trying to '"express ~yself," 40 iglpose ~y own personality on nature, but vith~utprejudice, without fafsification, to becoae identified with nature, sublimating things seen i~tothfcgs known - their very essecctz - so that what I record is not an interpretatio~, my idea of what nature shotm&g be, but a revelaticn - an absolute, i~personalrecognition of the significance of facts, 171

Photcgragbic critics have also perpetuated the idea of r~presentation,often in unconscious detriaect to photography.

An example can be drawn from the purist writing of the 1920's: The photograph has two guallties capable of stlwulating the aesthetic faculties. The first of these is concerned with the rendering or textural distinctions; the secord lies in the simple reproduction of the physically Ceautlkul, that is, of the beauty which nature has sc laviskly prcvid~d.,,0iien a phcltoyrapher opas his kns upon a given scece he l~avesbehind him the emclional force of direct experience, and has nothlcg to substitute for this i~dispensablrfactcr, Ths interest in the tracsfer is determined entirely by good taste and by the intelligence and by the irgenuity manifested i~ the sflection of the subjbct matter. As eaoticnal creation it is comparabie to the activity of a ~entimer~tafistbefore a beautiful sunset, 172

Picre recently an article in praise of Walker Evans evaluates his wcfk as follows: ",..he makes a photography not cnly a statement of fact but a statement in sheen: representation, of which the facts are necessarily an importa~taspect, indeeii, the very aspect which gives photographic form its particular

The strongest: expression of these ideas is io the field of V, ,, phctojousnalism, where phrases like nobjsctive reportingM and "the de tacbed observerw have common currency. Dorothea Lacge (1859 - l%S), who documented the Great Depression of the 30rs, had a quotation frolo Francis Bacon posted oc the door to her darkroom:

"The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusios, is in intseif a nobler thing than a whole harvest of inven?.ion.**l7* Comffienting on her ou n work she said, f9Documentary photography records the social sceEe of our time, It mirrors the present and documents for the future,, , It records (man's) custoas at work, at war, at play, or his rcund cf activities thrcugh tue~ty-fourhours of the day, the cycle of the seasons, or the span of a life.41aJS The idea that the phctograph is a mirror through which one can see the - - - - - thi~~g-ic-itselfis a corollary of aimtic theory.

Some of the most forceful statements of tnis view came from the ~ditorialmanagement of LIFE magazine. Bilson Hicks, LIFE'S picture editor and later executive editor (1937 - 501, gave photographers fairly stringent guidelines,

Ir, photc journalism the photograph is derivable only out of reality itself, The photcgraphes in relation to the subject matter of his picture does not bave a chcice between staying with or departing from seal'i Snt, fzeafity is ths master cf the photographer. Only what appears befofe his camera - ~othingelse - finds its way into bis pictnre.,.Wh~ther his "model** is a person, place or thing, he cancot change it by an int~rnixture in the emulsion of his negative of images past and pesent, iiaagined and real,,,lT6

It is interesting that Hicks' insistence of photographic literal is^ as a neasure of the medium*s integrity may have been want as discipfixed and heroic, but it was constantly undermined by his marriage of wards and iaages. Nicks* explici% justificatior for LLPEgs captions was that, *'The basic unit of ~hotcjournalism is one picture with words."

Fhon a newspaper or aagazine prints such a unit, the subject of which is news or within the vast bounds of matter related to news, it is practicing photojcurnafism in its siaplest form, But it is practicirg it in the true scnse csly if ths photograph and the words which accompany it cozstrttate "a chgle oxpre~sivestatemer,-tH or produce a unity of effect within the r~ader'sconscious~ess. In a single expressive statement it is essential that the comylemen tary r~lation between picture and words, in terms of subject aattsr, be iuily reaiizeu.iiF

For macy LXEE ptotographers the mattsr was not quite so simple.

LIf E cften used written captioris which distorted and negated the impact of certain photographs, A prime ~xampl~is W.Eugme Smith's pkcto of a soldier huldiag an infant. S&ith8s own response to the scere was direct and brutal: "A baby was found with its head under a rock, Its head was lopsided and its eyes wexe masses of pus, trnfcrtunat~ly,it: was alive, 5Je hoped that it would dic.wl'e

LIFEqs captioc told a cheerier story: "Plucked alive from a Saipan cave filled with corpses of hundreds ct Japanese civilizans and sofaiers, this baby was rushed to a G.1, hospital."l?g Not only did LIFE'S caption steer viewers away from the actual image, but

it furmufated a readymace ana optintistic reaction to it, one wfiich trartsforaed the luckless soldies into a hero in the midst of bloodshed,

Taken historically the surroucding of images with words can be traced back to the eighteenth-century doctrine of pictura

~~esis,"as ic painting, so in poetry." The phrase originally caRe from the Eoraan poet Horace, and. was intended to identify the strong affinities hetvee~painting and poetry, as distinguished from music acd architecture, The idea was reinterpreted by the

Renaissance and Enlightenment so as tc put a heavy literary ea,r;hasis octo re&resentational paintirg, French ~lassicismand

its GP~atan an2 British adherents insisted that the twc forms of

art new not slmpiy parallel but had ccaplementary and overlapping

Euncticns. This concept also had its rcors in the humacis%ic view

of th~paint~r as ar- educated stud~niof history and maa of

letters. Sith the increasing rate of literacy among the bourgeoise

ard aristocracy, and the encouragement of imperial sensibilities, the Greek and Roman authors becam a snobbish and more exclusive

alternative to the literature cf the Bible, whose scenes most

peasants could have recognized and comprehended. This tendency

supported that genre of literary pairttiny which tried to accurately

reconstruct and illustrate passages from Homes, Virgil, Ovid,

Cicerr?, Livy and Plutarch. Erren at the height of their success,

Literary paintings were felt to be incomplete or insufficient without extensive inscriptions which were aore than simple titles.

As oith ~imesis,the idea of gg picgura ~oesiscontained a snkordi.t.,ation of the inage to intellectual or scien'tific li.e.

archaeological) knowledge, and perhaps like some of tcdayts %odern

artw it was meant to mystify the ignorant masses, thereby

increasing the status and value of ownership, 180

Seen from another angle, the theory of gi pictura paesis incorporatea Briseotle3s belief that art has a narrative function, and it is clear that Aristotelian action, not Platonic c~nte~llpfation,is the style most apprcpriate to an expansive and - 98 -

society snck as developed The narrative, uclike the icon, also demaras Aristotle8s three unities - time, space and aceior* - and they were rigorously upheld by the acade~ies. Zt is significa~tthat it gas the Erlightamnt which wit:iesssd the birth of plot-orie~tedrepresectationa2. literaturs: the novel aad the historical romance.asa

/ The uneasy ghost of 24 ~Fcturapoesis still lives on in moderx phctography, though the intent now seeas to be the democratizatior,

@f the iaage by aaking it accessibfe to a coaaon verbal vocabulary,

Essays an the subject of "visual languagew and "visual gramiaarm often try tc analyze viewing as a foss of reading in the smse of li~ear,1 ogical scanning. 182 Many crixics have tried to treat photography as a species of literature: "The ask ir, photography is literary before it is anytkicg else, Its triumphs and rnonuaents are historical, ancedotal, reportcrial, observatioeaf before they are pureby pictosial,..The photograph has to tell a stcry if it is to work as art,"le3 Or, w,,,photography seems to be the iuost Literary of the graphic arts, It nil1 have - on occasion, and ic effect - quafrties of eloquenc~,wit, grace, ard economy; style of course; structure azd coherence; paranox and play and

The opposing view, that the photograph is more pictorial thas literary, has led to the cocclusion that photography Is weaker thar literature, cr at least less co~~rehensible.This seems to Without (words) there arises the guestion of how far human perception a~dpatience can be taxed, The morr reievant questlon 1s whether an a plcture story th~nocdiscursive ~hotcgraphic raeabua can be put to discursive use. So used, it would be necessary for each picture to present clearfi and ccmpletely a fact, idea or feeling which the read5r could comprek&nd in a si~gle visual act. This perfection in itself is not attainable. But if it were, could the reader's mind mtain the idea conveyed by each picture through a varied proyressior of pictures and co-ordinate all into a meaningful whole? The ansuGr is no.1"'

--Ut ~ictura----- poesis is still a controversial issue because, in opposition to this depecdence on words for visual ~~~prehension, some photographers have pointed out that the limitasicc of "humax! perception and patienceW may be a specifically cultural problem.

As Walker Evans put it,

The meaning of quality in photography's best pictures lies written in the lafiguage of vision, That larguage is learned by chance, cot system; and, in the Vestern world, it seems to have to be an outside chacca, Our \ 1 overwhelaing foraal education deals in words,

@athemtical figures, and aethods of rational thought, / not in images, This may be a form of conspiracy that promises artificial b1indness.f~~

And Minor White was once sc fed up with words being attached

to photographs that he felt moved to pin a coaraent to a gallery

exhibit: "Look, To See Is To Stop Talki~g.~~~?

Qne of the prominent by-products of this perc~visdlcgorrhea

is the a~si~ilationof individual photographs into uriversalized

abstractions. This is another characteristic feature of the - .- .. -. ideology of mechanistic scicncr, and its historical antecedents

ar& once agaic to be found ic the wknowledge explosionn of the

sou~~teen-hundreds, If the ur,iverse Is considered as a mechanislrt,

each of its parts must be standard, uaif orra and replaceable, Scientific taxonomy, as exp~ri~ncedin museuas, botanical garde~s,

dictionaries, encyclopedias, for~ularies,and tables of classificatiac, exhibits a preference tor the general over the

specific, the type over the individual, and the rule cver the exception, The diversity of ~aturalphenomena gives way to efficiency in classification at the same point in history when standardized commodities began to replace the works of individualized craftsmanship, The scie~tificdiscourse, following the economic realities, created the nctions of Xy~g(as in t*typcgraphy'l) and species, of which the individual a~dthe particular are the reprrsenitation, The technique of sa~pfingcbeys the principle of '*If you've seen one, you've seen the& all,. .f* except fos &inor variations, The scientrsts following Newton assumed not only that nature is ucifora ia its operations, but that scber,ce itself, a product of the rational. mind, would eventually prcduce a standard and immutable j&ilosophica prennis, or sagkintia snliv~rsalis.'"a

The final destinatioc for this train of thought is a belief in the unifcmity of human nature, ancther basic concept in the edifice cf liberal humanis@, Scie~tificknowledge rejected the o3.d eccl~siastical dicfilr~tony between Clrristiari snd heakben since

Greeks like Pythagoras and Euclid were atnony its picneer workers.

The liberal i.magz of humac dig~itywas built on the assuntptioa that reason separates Ean from the acimais, and that is is distributed without privilege to every human being, regardl~ss of race, religior:, or social situatioc, To this picture of pa& as tta thinking a~imalFore pessiaistic writers, taking their cue from Original Sin, counterposed another image, that of the selfish, willful creature which uses reason only to further its own blind ar.d egotistical motives. Again, few of the intellectuals wkc took part in the dispute - including Machiaveili, Hobbes, Jonathan Swift, Calvin and Luther on the side of the pessimists - fslt any ccffipunction ic generalizing about the entire humac race on the basis of what they observed about the& ia European civilization,'89

This ethcocentricity, hased o~ wscience", allaged them to label agrariar,, ncrtladic, and con-technocratic cultures ifprimitiveif,

*8undevelcped*+,and visual1 y "picturesqueH. The conce~tionof a universalized "human naturet* is the Beans whereby bourgeois class-consciousness projected itself into history, allowing the middie classes tc; see therns~lvesas the type and repms~ntativa of all mankind, or as tke class of all classes. Definitions of intelligence, culture, progress, wealth, rationality, and family structure were transposed, with astonishing facility , from the drawing rooms of Europe to the colonies of Africa, indiz, the

Pacific, acd the Americas.l~o In regard to its aesthetic dimen~ior~s,the idealization of the norm was supported by mar,y artists and critics, beginning auricg the Henalssance, and reachlcg 3ts apoyeE In the period of

Classicism, Typical cf this attitude was the faaous society paiLter Sir Jcshua Eeynolds 1723 - 1792 ), who managed to mass-produce over toc thousand cacvases during his lifetime, As first pr~sidentof the Royal Acade~yir2 Britai~,and influential spokesman for fashionable attitudes ir, England throughout his career, Reynclds continually upheld the principle cf nor~ative idealis~in his Discourses, delivered to the Royal Academy for tEe edification of its students:

There is an absolute ~ecessityfor the painter to generalize his notion; to paint particulars is not to paint cature, it only to paint circumstances, When the artist has conceived ic his imagination the image of perfect Leauty, or the abstract idea of foras, he may be said to be admitted into the great council of Mature. 193

The senti~entwas seconded by Samuel Johnson (3709 - 841, the leading literary figure sf his age: "The business (sic) of a poet is to exami~e,mX. the inaividual, but the species: .to re~ark general properties and large appearances; he does not number the streaks of the tulip, of describlz the different shades of the verdue sf the fore~t.~l9* The sa@e attitude has been transplated into the twfntieth century so that in 1970 Ernest Baas made perfect scnse to his hearers when he described his photograph of a *llittle Austrian girl waiting at the train station, hoping for the return of h2r fathrr, who was a prisor,ss of the Kussians. She was

clutching at.1 cld snapsha* of him In cre hacd,**

., ,this picture of the little girl iias abstract., .because 1 was seeking a certain universality. f wasrt8t interested in a specific little girl, nor did I want to know her came,.,f simply wanted my subject matter to be universal, This girl b~camethe idea of all little girls who are looking for their fathess,%g3

The liberal humanist elevation of universality also guided

tEe formation of g& Family pf m, easily one of the mcst i~portactexhibits of modem photography eveE assembled. Carl

Sanriburg*~introductior to *+th~greatest photographic exhibitior,

of all time - 503 pictures froa 68 countries,,,an dphabet and a multiplication table of livicy breathing faces," completely

glossa3 over the very real differences betwee@ industrial societies

like our own and the tribal cultures they are steadily exterminating.

Everywhere is love and love-making, weddings and babies from generation to generation keeping the Family of Man alive and continuing. Everywhere the sun, Boon and stars, the climates and weathers, have raeanings for peopl~. Though meanings vary, we are ail alike in all countries and tribes in trying to zead what sky, land and sea say to us. Rlike and ever alike we are on all cocticents ic the geed cf Icve, food, clothing, work, / sp~~ch,worship, sleep, games, daacity, fun, Pram tropics to arctics humanity loves w~th these needs so alike, sc hexorably alik~.I94

But the steadiest practiticners at vniversalizing photography

were the capticn- writers of LIFE magazine, Like Baccn, Diderot szd ths compiLers ef the gncydw3ig, the editors cf LIFE scuyht to compartmentalize and present the wurid of experience in a serifs of co~pactbut comprehensive segments: "The Athletes, The Leaders,

The Black Cause, The Lard, The Soldiars, ,,M dnd 1*Misc~llanyw.~95

ZIPEas title itself icdicated its ideological orientation, but the captions made it evsn plainer: while the photographs showed vivid particulars of individual experiences, LIFE cor.sist~ntly ca tegorized them as broadly as possible, Alongside the picture of a seamar, kissing an apparent stranger LIFE wrote, "On V-J Day,

(Alfred) Eisecstaedt caugbt this sailor and girl who sum~t~dup the nation's victory spree,* as though V-J Day meat cnly one thlng to all America~s, and as though the sailor's sexual refease was a display of patsiotism,~Q~LIFE also leaned on the wcrd "classicw:

"12 a classic exa~pleof pas.ir=, Shacghai citizecs converge in a tangle of arms and legs, (though many of the subjects are am usedly smiling) ; "8 procession of Sikhs stretches like a classic fri~zeachss the Inaian llacdscape as they fie& (a cornparison of flesh and blood with polished stone); "This 1959 co mbinfttion of uiiniskir t, well-groomed long hair and sunglasses is a rncdern class'cw(5i fberggicg the questictrt of eaforced conformity in mass-merchandised fashions) .l93 One is telrtpted to mad these captions and disniss then as the rhetoric of draaatization but they actually cut deeper, partly by making this disiaissal too easy,

A farucus LIFE photograph entitled "The Piano Recitalw showed a boy und~rten years of age strai~ingauay at the instrument, while a crcvd of relatives and r~ighkorslisteas critically. LIPEfs caption: "What made this picture an American classic was that everycne could see hiaiself ir, that Iowa parlor, as nervous parent, scloist at the pcict cE cc rctcrr, or, worst of all, the terrified next-in-line,"lga Though some ot us ~ZghtLook back on those terrifying ordeals as cruel ana barbaric, LIFE wanted its readership to merely to chortle at the collective recoffection of American childhood, That chilhdrer. probably grow up hating music as a result of these trials is, cne vovld guess, too specific a fact to iatra2e on tho purity of the abstractioa.

one could go on with endless examples. T~Ephotcgraph of an arny physical witb a statemect that the draft was *a rite of passage for a generation cf war-bound American mer.," but that gk neralization obscuring the specific fucction of Ej tss-42-passaqg which is to turn boys into &ea, while the draft can be seen as designed to dc just the cpposite.~g+ Or the constant a~tfiropcmorphisizi-ngof aniaafs; "'8ith a pierci~glyhuman ex~~essiocof terror, this howler onk key is trapped between /' apprcafhing rescuers and death by dr&nirg., .fs or, *!In unconscious human imitation, a red-haired orangutan,,, seems to pose like

The Hac witb tbe Hoe," though Charles Darwin demonstrated that humac axpressions are simian, and net vice versa, Ordc sentence a1 cne might take a full book tc analyze: "An Eagle's Swoop:

Bature*s ruthless law is captured in this pkotogsaph as surely as the ground squirrel in the talocs of the Califcrnia golden ragle,"200 Bithout actually writing that book oce coul6 point to the assu~ptioristhat *lNa-tureJ$(an abstraction) operates by a ja~cttkerNewtonian abstraction) which is **ruthless" fa humar, value) , a law of competltior. instead of ecological cooperation fa finat umlisticig justif ication for capitalism dati~gback to

Hobbes); and to the strange equatioa betufen the act of prey and the activity of the photographer,

The trad toward universalizing and abstracting photographs is play~dout in another wanner, also grounded in th~world- view of the Enlightenment. ~echanistic,behavsoristic psychology, ccnceived by Hcbbes, Hume, Spicoza, Lccke and the neurologist

R~rtley,pictured the process of thinking as a linear series of cause-and-ef fect chain r~actions(like billiard balls knocking each ct her), regulated by ths principle of association;- this was afsa see@ as the basis of all learning. Associationism uas picked up by most British and continertal aestheticians of the period and or.@ its leading proponents urotE of art that, ,' /" ...the beauty of colors is, in most instances sesolvab2e into associati~p: these being approved, which either hy a natural rese~blance,or by custom, or opinion, introduce a~dare connectea with agreeable ideas of any scrt; and those being disapproved, which have any way become related to disagreeable ones.201

Despite the advent of Gestalt psychology and all that frwd wrote about the limits of free association (due to rs~sessioc), phctographic critics still writ& as thciugtn the purpose cf the image was to set off an unlimited strea~of asscciation, which begins at the photcgraph and ends back at the grand uniwrsals: associatwr.ism 1s theref~rethe key tc the modern critic's hermneuti.c. A photography ffiagazirie recently told its readers to

Evoke i~aqinatiocwith nature, In his nature ------I------_)_ pictures [Eugene) Atget deepened his statement regarding the photographic psoblelxl of the fens: th~closer one looks at and knows the real world, the less it seem to be simply what it is and the sore it suggests other possibilities. Beston's peppers were a later statement cf such a transformaticc, Is that just a tss~root or the leg of an enormous bird? Almost all his tree and sature pictures are an open provocation to associatei and da ydream,zaa

Daydreaming aside, in its iextreiae form this hermewutic resembles a pebble cast into a pond, with the mental ripples

~xk~ndirigtoward the edges of inlaginaa;ion. xri actual practice the critic's garrte of "reminds @eofN seems to haw tss varieties,

In the democratic version, as exe~plifiedby LIFE, the, pebble is tkrovn into an ocean of memories and asscciations re6ching to the ti meless, boundless horizon: %.he eternities of birth, death, growth, decay, love, childhccd, man3s inhumanity to man, and so oc, all aenta2 abstractic~swithout specific ~xperientalor historical coctent, For the more exclusive version the body cf water would have to be something smaller and Bore prestigious, as when Johr L.Ward compared pkotographs to th~works of relatively minor painters and sculptors Pike Esancusci, Up, Mark Pothko, ar-d Adolph GcttlFeb, works known best to the readership of a highhsowc jcurnal such as Art~Eorgg.2os The range of ripples is eften a measure of the critic's audienck: refer~ccsstc Weston's p~~~crs as renindrrs of ''tfi~sersuousress af iire like1y tc be found in LIFE or hgLay phqimggra~hx; associations with the pai~tifigsof Hark Rothko are more oftidri found in academic revieos uith a more restricted number of subscribers,

Hiaesis, g& pictura poesis, nor~ativeidealism, universal is^ acd asscciatiocisnt - all grew cut of the sarrte historical and ideological framework and all coctinue in support of definite sccioeconomic functions. But the frame itself, the comaon basis for all these ideas is the powerful, co~trtpl2x, and prestige-laden theory of art which has long been known as foxaalism. FomaPism, as was seen at the beginning, is essentially the theory that art -% is a specialized huaan activity, with its own aims and object, ar.d its own specific modes of acti~nand procadus%, all of which are amenable to intellectual a-alysis and interpretation. %at ---ars was a set of orderly, repeatable, teachable methods of dealing with matt~~was a concept well estabfishsd in antiquity, accepted ic the EiddPe Agks, and given new iap~tusby Renaissance theorists.

I Rut as the Age of Reason began tc separate the "fins arts" from those that were merely decorative or useful, the reed simultansously arose to distinguish the varying principles that supposedly uad~rlaythem. The formalism of that century had a cu~berof other sources, all of which form an interesting comentnry on its ccntinued survival and influence in our own

period, Besides the riofion of art as craft, the ssgularization

of all. activities, especially thosa related to polite society,

etiquette azd culture, was a vital part of the aestheticization of courtly society in ysn~r&l,acd it is tot surprising that people

who wrote handbooks about the proper mathod of settizg a dicnsr plate should write about art in the saw veir, also. Tbe habitues

of Paris safons, where the term beaux arts first emerged, were aristccratic amateurs, neither artists nor writers, who nevertheless saw aesthetics as the key to models of behavior for

standards ~f cultivation, department, grace, restraint, wit,

the appropriate byword not just for the first of the French classicist painters, but for: am atire group of people to whcrn formalism uas an everyday set of prescribed and correct behaviors,

f ncidentally, those who concerned themselves with the arts at that time wgrs operating in an intellectual vacuum created by

the success of the natural sciences. The major philosophers to

the yeas 1700 - Descartes, Hobbes, and the lens-grinder Spiaoza - had relegated beauty to the real@of secondary qualities, which made of art a subjective and psychological issue, To a large rxtsni' this was, in an age of science, felt to be a denigration, and the ccar,aisseurs were moved to argue that their field of of art was to make of it a science, which alsc meant subjecting

- -it - to strict rules and requlations, In ~rftianespeciall~. forntaiism was supported by the psychoiugical theori~sarising out

of Locke*s empiricism. As David Wuae ( '1711 - 74 ) saw it, **in

the productioc and conduct of the passloris there is a certain

regular mechar,ism which is susce~tibleof as accurate a

disquisi tior as the laws of motion, optics, hydrostatics, or any

other part of natural philosophy.*vzo* It was on this basis that Zdmund Burke 13729 - 97) was able to conclude that, **Ee-auty is, for the greater part, some quality in bodi2s, acting aechanically

upon the human mind by the icterventicn of tha ser-.se~.~205,It 1 was specialized know1 edge of these mechanistic f avs which allowed

the rcyal acade~i~sto dominat~the art scena for so lo~y,and

tc give art an aura of exclusiveness, Sir Joshua lyeycofds,

I instructinq his students, saia it best: I

Everything (beautiful) which is wrought with certainity is wrought upon sone principle, Ef it is net, it cannot be repeated,. .every objecx: which pleases must give us pleasure u poo some certain pri~ciples,.. the idea of beauty in each species in an invariabl2 one,,, It is very proper that,,,rules should be given in the Academy: it is proper tke youcg studenrs shcufd be informed that some research is tc be ntada, and tbat they should be habituated tc consider every excellence as reduceable to principles, 206

' One cf f cr nalism*s i~evitablebyproducts necessarily iccluded

th~u~iquely modern position of the art critic, the supposedly

impartial ebs~rverrhcse fucetion is to uphold thg rules and rcprirnar-d wher, they are violated, Just as iri the lik~raltheory

of politics, where government exists to uphold the laws of free

e~t~rprisp,the c~itic- a ccr.sumErlg guae to the arts - is to keep urf air [faddish, forgeii, pornographic) compe titicn off the

art market {thereby protecting art as an i~veslmect)-207

:Photography has had more than its share of rules and rule

books, most of then issued during the heydays of the

purist-pictorialist battles. ctorialists like Henry Peach

Bobinson (Pictorial Effect ir, Phctogfa~h~~1869) draw heavily on the Dutch &asters- Hemhrandt, Van Dyke, Vermeer - acd ajso B~ynaTds,zo~The purists developed sulas about camera size (tha

bigger the better), depth-of-field, minimizirg grain, raaxiatum

degrees of enfarg~ment, the use of gfcssy jnon-f erreokyped) paper,

printing for full tocal scales, ar,d tE-@ axcfusirsn of retouchi~g or hand coloring.'Qg Contemporary purists like Beaumoa% Newhall

ar:d Helatut Germsheia are still concerned that the photograph look

ilphotoyrapDic?*, a quality assumed to resids in "the inhesent characteristics ~f the medium," rather than on historical

- reconsideratiocs of the term flphotographic". Even today one still finds rules, t bough they might be cansidered old-fashioned:

Kcdakis ~tdviceon S and C curves and fcthe rule of thirds1\ or Ansel

Bdams* ?iGeorr,ietrical Appr~achto Ccmposition8\ 2" Buules are in

fact tke mainstay of the mass-ciscula ticr photo magazines, though

presected as l*pickure-taking ideas"; rules also guide the style an3 tezor 05 nor; sophisticated foriiialkst criticism, kL indication cf th~racgE of this trend is afforded by juxtaposing tuc coments on two dLfferent photosraphs, appeari~gin widelv different sourcss. The first is froa Plnotpqyshy, a pulp magazine which carries a high percentage of consumer-oriented advertising.

Blank canvas of snow can serve as a foil for selected cclors and at the same time emphasize the yecmetry of nature, as in this picture of a iuaplo orchard belo~ging to one of (Richard) Brown's Verrrtont neighbors, Out walking after the year's first snowfall ma November, Brow~was attracted by the freshly fallen leaves, which / dotted the white snow with muted c~lors, A Nikon PTn, 28am f/3,5 Nikkor leas and KIf •’if& were used, The photographer doesn*t reme& ber the exact exposure, but he used a smali enough aperture to keep foreground and backgroua sufficiently sharp.213

And the second is quoted from &poking ghotoaraph~{lgti?), written by +he Mus~u~nof Hodern Art's director of photography,

John Szarkowski:

The profile of the body on the right side of the picture draws a beautiful line. The effect of this line depends on its closeness to the frame, the baseline against which its undulation is measured, A teacher of drawicg occe pointed out to his studects, in trying to persuade thern to use the whole sheet of paper, that a peanut in the botton of a basr~lwas merely a spct, whereas a peanut in a pezcy matchbox was a piece of sculpture, 2a2

3cth captions are examples of nuts-and-bolts analysis, formu2as fcr snccessful Jatagery which describe the zxpressivecess of pEotograpEs in terms of technical acccmp2.ishmeLt {"use a small aperturegt and 88fillthe frame are the twc lessons). Questions regarding the pphotogragtr-~*.r%personal relationship tc nature, ir,

the first case, are answered by the phrase, wBsowo was attractad,H a metaphor which is apt for gravitaticral iorces between inert cb jects, ard cegates the possitifity that attacti.cn ar,c icattentizn are innardfy directed. In neither cask is the readership told why the critic found that particular image nsafiingf uf or movirg as a personal experiance, 'Taken at this level of operation then,

formalism is the intellectual seduction of art to a kind of Populay:

Rechanicg, at different levels of sophistication, as Joshua /

I Reynolds believed, "Art is not a divine giftfg - it is Bore a matter ,' I of studying the right rules and using the best equipment.

D~~derstcodhistorically, it is obvious why formalism has been photography * s dominant aesthetic to dat~,since it repr~sentsthe

~xtarsion,into the field sf art, of what Jacques E3_Lul tellingly nam~d&a technisu: "the totality of methcds rationally arriv3d at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity,"zl3 fn art, fa techniqgg is not simply the aesthetic of The Machine {as the Futurists interpreted it) , but that of the entire Cartesian-Newtonian uciverse: controlled, orderly, clean, efficient, regular, mechanistic, predictable, unifor~,stable, and rational - and institutionally white, male, middle-class and intellectual, The pursuit of &g ggch&iqup in art has given our alsc, culture not ocly ~hctographyitself but formafism a cool, ;-A&,. wrebral, ob jiective, "value- freea1appr~ach to photography, which sees its "joW as tho inter~retationof photographs so that +-hey are glprofitabfy analyzedq*, The ring of the mental cash register

is a suitable reminder that Eoraalisia, with its ~~rnstantemphasis on ccmpetence, accomplishment, technlgue, and efficiency of

wrthsds, is the entrance info art of what Herbert flarcuse called ---the perform(zw6 principlf, the manrjer in which raear.5-wkereby axe converted into au tonornous ends-in-t hemsef ves, and evaluated . - according to detached measur~mrntsof technical perfection. 2 14 i

One last elemect is needed ko conplete the basic picture of the liberal huriianist theory of artistic quality, the ~lement concer~edwith aieaninq, Though the Romantics later deplored the

barrer, inhospitable prrcision of the Newtonian cosmos, its originators and spokes me^ firmly believed that they were actual.1 y

discovering what gave the wcrld its ultlrnate purpcs-; axid value.

Drscartes, NEvton, Bacon, th~~hiloscpphes and phliloscphers of the E~fightenmer~twere generally not atheists but fervent Celievers

5c a pew and idealistic faith known throughout the eighteenth century as deism, os "natural se2igiorAfl,21s The clockwork regularity that science thought it found in nature convinced

Newton, and many of his contemporaries, that the universe kad bee^ purposefally caastrucied by a Higher Intelligence,22* The irnmdiat~ im~iicationwas that science had uncovered a @oralorder in the universe, with dsfislte imperatives for human conduct and behavior: dr the UEG cf tecbnclogy for ~sbleaims gas cne of th~m. Since a higk moral and quasi-religious vaf ue was not put on business prc fessiccs, engineering, scler tif ic research, f aw, government and medicine, the arts were expected to make their contribution

also. Photography was quickly sub jectea to thes~standards of

valuation ~sp~ciallybecaua~, in the days of its infancy, early

fears that it was "an invecticr. of the lievilHzt? bad to be

discrediteE, The first &ass-produced photographic book, Talbotqs ---The -----Pfncif of Nature (18Q4), paid due homage to organized religiox* - of twenty-four plates, eight are of churches or related

monumer-ts. OGG of the first major phctographic undertakings, the calotypes of David Octavius Hi31 (7802 - 18701 and Rokert Adamsoc (7 821 - 18Q7), were commissioned for the sake of xeccrding the l'Disruptionw of ths Church 0f Scctiand (18ri3). The early French

daguerreu.typists photographed cathderals and the Staticns cf the Cross in Jerusafem,2la

Contemporary photographers, especially those working in thz classical or straight traditioa, have of ten expressed faith in

/ (tte connectioas between photography and &oral virtue, of ten in

terms that are u~consciouslyderived from established or natural

religion, Yousuf Marsh, who was brought up in a religious hcusehald, and who cclrisidered a career in the mi~istry, is perhaps

the best example, and books like j?p?gs pf Of3~TAi and Portraits --of ------Greatness reflect this baclyround,*l~ The famous Sierra Club bcoks are filled with the seutiments of natural religion, as

perhaps mcst strongly expressed by Ansel Adams' speech on the role of photography ic conservaticn: Pre-Renaissacce and Renaissance ast was almost ettirely based on religious motivation; them was an all-pervading cause. Art was dedicated to the Glnry of God, 1 think it is time that the Glory of God be revivsd; only now, instead of salnts and angels, myths ar:d legends, ritual an2 dogma, we hav~the vast and luminous evidences of God in the realities of the cosmos in whicb we five, We ass on ths threshold of a new revelation, a new awakeoing, But what we have acco~plishedup to this time must be multiplied a thousandfold if the great battles are to be -join&, and wen, EaE nust aff is& his spiritual kanship with the eternity of Nature. 220

Another exanple is Ernst MansS g& Cmation (1971), a series of phctographs pr~facedby the th~story of Genesis, King James sersior. In discussi~qthe difference between art and science in the introduction Haas urote, qiScience, while anlargirtg our view

itself. This quest, a spiritual one, has always been within the reab cf religion and cf the highest foras of art azlu fiterature, "221 Or, as Halph Hattersley put it, "~hotographyhas corn? closer tc being a seligioc than acythirig else acst of us have

Natural religion dispecses with the ritual, prejudice, and superstition cf *'revealed r~ligioas'l, and puts its trust in bringing all rnankhd cf oser to God through the disse~inationcf reason: science, philcsophy, technohgy, education, literacy, a ratioriallzed economy. But behind this all is the distinctly mod~r~ belief ir, prwrgss, a concept iargely Loreigs to the Greek sense of history as tragic, ard It&Catholic cyzPa of siri-and-sedemptio~,

The essential thrust of deism is that man is to work cut his own sal~atior~and sclcntific knowlrdqe, when not pursued as an er,d in itself, became regarded as the key to the perfectability of human society, YOL humanists like Descartes and Fra~icisBacon there were few farseeable limits to the growth of scientific kcowledge and its ability tc sfevate mankind materiafl~and spiritually. The id~aof human history as a progr~ssiontcward utopia has becn a central thew of liheral humanist thought since

Thornas Hoore, and in writers as divergent as John Locke and Karl

Marx pscier tific socialism8') CG-E sees its COCE~C~~OII.to mcdern theories of government and education,*z3 Progress ir human affairs becam identikied with the refinemect ot technology as early as the P~raissacce, though the ti~snow are sc obvicus as to seam invisible - oto has to think twice to realizf that the declarati~~,

"A small st~pfor nan, a giafit step for mankiadfWis a statement of faith, o~ethat the cultures of antiquity and the Widdl~Ayes would have found inpious, if no% incomprehensible. TiPrcgressw is still a magic word ir. contemporary liberal politics ("The New

DealM, "The New Frontier'" "lThe Great Societytt), economics (growth, i~dustriafdevelopment, rising standards of living, increasing Gross Naticflal Product) , ana academe (replacement of flignorance*T by "knowledyew, i~provedinstruments and ir,ethodologies, bigger likraties, raorc? research grants, increasing ?nrollments) . Nothing short of the threat cf ~calogicaldisaster has brought about a Movlng froln the sublime to the ridiculous for a mcment, the jdealizaticn of psagsess rucs rampant through most of the di.scussio~in favor of technology, and photography is no exceptio~~,

On the contrary, it surfaces hese in the rhetoric surrounding the camera as an object of mass consumption, One hat~stc belabor the obvious but it is all tco easy to overiook the dsfiberately pontifical quality of safes advertising - "NiQon: Elements of Gr~atXless'~, It is this very sericusn~sswhich, presented as facile bourgeois optimist, also accounts for the mildly disresectful tone of vcice used by c~lulanists g~dggpand J??g&qy ;Phcstocfraphq when they evaluate the latest products of their advertisers - manufacturers like the Eastman Kodak Company, "The Great Y~licw

Fatherr'. Tha language of tfie ads stress the compete~ceand r~liabilityof thr products; the coluiairtsts offer: a fraternal. kibbitzirtg of the authorities to whom they are beholdea for eco~omicsurvival and ar? influx of new subject mattes, wButcmatic fccusing: gimmick strictly for the birds or practical possibility?

Rcneyuelf says it's real, Yeah?@22s Like the shcp talk of retail camera salesmen, the jocular skeptcisln is of course a bluff - no magazine will antagonize its advkrtisers, and no columnist can be expected tc know mare about cameras and lenses than the experts whc design them, ahat +he cc2umnists act out is not a critique of progress - which would amcuct to sacrilege - but a guide to the faithful. Herbert Kepl~r,editor and publishes of PIgqgfn ----Pkotoqsg~hy, writes a prototypical c01ua.n of mini-homilies au dressed to the dlscrlrnlnatlcg talt kt~.~:

\ Historically, the human acl~afhas proved to be amazingly gullible i~ believing the impossible, and y~t, many times, what has appeared to be impossible has actually been accomplished, No alcheaist has yet turned dross metal into gold, nor has ary knight foucd the Fountain of Youth, But Ban (~g)uoes fly, la~don the moon, and see the wcrPd in his own home in color while sitting in his armchair. In terms of general fufillment cf wild prophesies, it's abcut 50 tercent deliver and 50 percent not,*+*

Note that the 50 percent delivered refers exclusively to tectnological accompfish~ents, f he line of de~askation negates

non-rational methods like alchemy or magic, or as Baccn would have said, the Idols of Alchemy and nagick. T~Esermon, a paear, of

proyrEss, continues:

But In photography, the percentage of success has beec incredi#ly high. Hearly all of our nost far-cut ravings have come into being. Ye have color, stereo and instant (well, almost icstant) pictures. In SLR hardware (well, you knew I*d getto that) , we have compactaess, speed of operaxion, abihty to taka pictures in any light, and viewing though the lens. Our frame counter counts autornaticafly and returns to zero autowaticaliy, Our auto diaphragm closes auto~atically andreopens automatically , and the rapid-return mirror cperates in like manner. UE wanted cameras with autontatic-exposure control, and lo, we have thera, Be asked to he reliev~dof the effort of winding the film and shutter, and this ~ctordrives were bcrr,, Camera

T~Fnext step is automatic focusing, Why, with it, the subj~ctwould always be abscfutely sharp. Thbrr would be no chance of human focusicy error through bad judgemeat, bad eyesight ax camera movement. Hhat a gioricus holy graif to seek?" Camera rnar~ufacturershav~ already "rubbed their magic laaps sufficie~tly hard to corn2 up withH these devices (Ereudrans, take rate). Rut human beings will still be teed~din photography since tqnocarnora has successf1.22 ly framed our picture cornpositiosafly with creative taste (thank the Lord!) .***28

Getting back to thecry, the liberal faith in progress carries disti~ctfymoral imperatives with it, iiiiperatives which frsqurctly dovetail uith the Protestant work ethic, both in its hostility tc the world ~f aatter, 2nd its eapbasis on self and coamunity improvement. To the ~aj~rthinkers of the Enlightenment the removal of all inequalities between i~dividuals,sexes, classes, and races necessitated a thorough, even radical reforin of the existing social order ic favor of scmethiny morally higher; their middle-class ~upportesswent on to see their own struggle against economic privilege as ac ~noblsdprototype for all prcgressive political movements, Liberalism, especially in the rir-eteenth cectury, tended to cast all moral questions in the framework of a society which celebrated its highfst material accomplishments a$ symbols of universal progress, which maintainzd social justic~ as its historical mission, acd claimed altruistic self-sacrifice as its gr&atest vf rtue. The essentially mrafistic attitudes of Iiberaliss as a credo arf still ~vfdanc~din the current rhetoric oc war, pacl ficbm, free sp~rch,the IegaPiza tion of aarijuanar abortion, welfare, econo~icfxploitation, civil rights, ecology, and the defecse of the Free World ayaiast the menace cf

Communism. 229

The i~plicationsfor photography are manifcld since to liberal ' idealism "the temptation of art to betrayal of the sccial conscience is irremediable,n2JO and art must therefore exist on the defensive, First, any refigion of reason must prize 1 intellectual com~reheasicncver cfea tions that speak to the aiiotioas, and art is not a *'reliable" fcr~of knowledge in a techstocratic society. As Eraxicis Bacca put it, art 3qdotf.r.truly refer to the Imagination: which, being not ti~dto the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which nature hath severed, and sever tbat which nature hatfr joiued, and so aaake unlawful ~atchas acd divorces of things,'=3l Art can be tolerated only if it has didactic value, if it is educati~cal,or part of a prograw of *?cultlfraf~orichment'~, Hence, LIFE'S promise "to see ard be

ac axhibit which ndemonstrates that the art of photography is a dynamic process of givicg form kc ideas and of explaining Ban to Ran.w~32 ,"I:' ,

I,' Skcondly, progressivisa ioevitably ~akessocial iapact the measuze of art's value, a problem which did not bcther earlier cultures in quite the sam fashion. Cornall Capa, speaking apologetically irA Concerned @otoqrahlig 2 (lW2), felt the ne~d,commorily expressed, to prove that photography ccufd fight the gccd fight,

No day passes without someone question~ngthe power of photographs to cause change, As a photographer, I have ~y own positive opinion, Mowevix, in response, simply consider the role of the writtan word, whicf; has had a longer track recard, Has & managed to cause change? Iraages at their passionate and truthful best are as powerful as words eves call be, If they alms cannot bring change, they can, at least, provide an undistcrted ~irrarof @an's actions, thereby sharpeni~g humn awareness and awakening conscience.233

Even landscape photographers are moved to write declarations

%hat they are not just "dcing their own thing," but ccntributing tc th& betterment of society, nicor Bhite used an &ggs= ~dikorizlto answer **the plea made,,,to photographers, Cosne to grips, make a statesent or a commitmnt, take a stand in regard to the realities cf was abroad and threatening riots at home."

Comparing the landscape artist to a monk, Hhite answered that

his photographs are prayers - for the rest of us. He takes his stand, aware of the futility of actiar.. In full consciousness of the insanity of the world, he makes his action; his photographs a prayer, He turns his camera on rocks, water, air and fire, not t~ escap6 but to be in life, but riot of it Is&). He acts to bring out the concentration of something without which man will blow out his heart.234

Rrturni~gone moralism with another, White's reply is a statemerot that the photographer needs to be as-holy-as- thou, ~b~yir-qthe call, doing bls duty, Perhaps this is why It is sc

rffreshing +e read a less guilt-ridden and more mature answer,

such as the one offered by W.Eugune Smith aftdr photographing mercury-pciscced Micamata.

Photography is a small voice, at best, but swaetimes - just sometimes - ope phctograph or a group of them cac lure our senses intc awareness. Buch depends upon the viewer; ir, some, photographs can summon encugk enotion to be a catalyst to thought, Someone - or perhaps many - among us way be iniluenced to heed reascn, to find a way to right that which is wrong, and may even be inspired to the dedication needed to search fcr the cure to an illness. The rest of us may. p~rj*apsfeel a greater sense of u~derstandingand compassion for those whose lives ars alien tc our own. Phatogsaphy is a small. voice, It is an impcrtant voice iii my life, but not the only ow. I believe in it, ff it is well-conceived, it sowe times works, ,.235

finally, the hand of the Judaeo-Christ~an supfr-egc is felt

thrcughout the debate on phctography's formal characteristics, as is to be expected fr~macy aediunt which ha-s "truthu credited to it as an aesthetic fsature, Photographers and critics have generally issued imnifestctes not only on what photography actually

is, but what it ought to be, especially those defending the purist

pcsition, chile there may be a number of aconomically advantayecus rGascns for insisting on a clear separation betweec painting and plotography, the purists have done so with a means-ends dichctomy that aight have pleased a fundamectallst like Calvin. In Protestant theology the weans are all-important - good works by themselves do not icsure salvation. In the purist aesthetic, like thf Puritar: ethic, the power ot ac i~tageis cancelled if the technique employed was cot a PUKE one. Thus fIePmut Gernsheim, a Swiss defender of "The New Objectivity", accuses Eokoly-Nagy cf philistine izaulgetce: #'The Arnarica~~photographer (A1fred

Staicylitz) at. least pursued the proper aims of photography, wfies-eas the Hucgarian paicter was ccncerced with image-making fcr his own aesthetic EI~~s.~~PJ~jrI a@ all fur expressing the spirit of oux: time in photography, but noa at the expense of sacrificing one iota of its characterist Gercsheim, like all Puritans, seems to fear thaa somecne idill have a good time and yet auay with

It: The danaer lies in.,,seeing in unconventional experiments the signal for a general license to dc as they (phctcgraphess) pleas, and pass of? sloppy workmanship as creative intenticn.,.Ffirtation with art only pays tor a limited period,

Respect for the photographic image will. always remin the fundamelrtal principle of gocd phcztography,'*238 Histcrians like

Var, Deren Coke and Beaumont Newhall have also refused to deal seriously with images co~structedas hybrids of painting and photography, as though the technical "purityH ef their creation was an p piaik aesthetic value.

Coming full circle nov, it becomes apparent that ic a culture where professional inco~opetscceis still equated with personal defectiveness, formalism is dg fpzigo an aesthetic of mralistic ju dgedient which stren@ously avoidg. any suggest ion that artistic cofinaisseurship relates to hedonistic inauig~nce. Unlike Freud, Darwin, Dewcy, Marx, the Surrealists, and soae sf the P~mactics, f~rmalismfccates the "natural aesthetic impulse+Gi a philosophically higkar reglcc cf hurnar thought and action, rather thaz ic the cxperiance of the body, ttt uczonscious, os ths unresolved ccnf ficts between performance and pleasure principles,

3t also dist i~guishesthe f ice arts E~QRIdecoration ard hat dicrafts by th~supposed loftiness of their idealistic intent and spiritual elevation. Ar,d since what formalists look for in photography is mainly progress, perfection, aastery, and intellectual ideas givec material expr~ssior?,- a11 summarized in the word @*truthw- the student cf photography is ~GXCG~to ask whether or not this aesthetic actually repressed the viewer*s power to appreciate an image to the fullest,

Ths real test ccmes when, with an image before it, formalist criticisa is put into operatior", A prim example is afforded by

Johc L,Ward, author of The Criticism of Pbatqg&aphy as A&, me of the clearest and ~ostthcrough statements of foriaalistic principles applied to photography, and one which avoids the dogmas of thf purist p~siticc. Among the phctoyraphs that Ward scrutinizes is Edward Hestoc's piJ Pan (1930) , fc his critique,

Ward claims that, "The paradox is that we recognize it as a bed pan - a mundace, even emf;arrassiRg object - but we siroultaaecusly perceive it as an unbelievably pure farm which rises and swells ic space completely untainted by Izs use.?*z39 Reirterating, Ward adrls that, '*The gag belor-gs to the same family of fcrms as the best of Y~stor-~speppers, shef.ls, and nudes. Like them, it

employs sersuouscess, evec sexuality, in its eft ects, but the forms

are so purified, so raised abav*; the wundalna world, that oce might better speak of holiness than sex,*lz4o contparing Nesaon with a

sculptor of the Athenian Parthenon, faard concludes that, "Both

artists reach a classical purity not by avoiding the specificnbss ar?d immediacy of physical objects or bodies but by directly confronticg, tctally embracing, and finally transcending them.

The concentrated feeling which the viewer senses in j33 Pag is not caused by any direct expression of emotion but by the moral rightress, the authority, the unchallengeability of the presenta tion, ~241

All .three of Ward's statements cocvey the salae message: that the tensica and excitement of g3 Egg has to d~ with the transforma tioc of a physical tkiag into an elevated, purified, sanctified, moral lly righteous abstract~on,a pure form which partakes cf the sacredness cf religion, The mundane, s~xual,evec embarrassing pualiti~sof the object depictea are said to convey tb E "effectsff of speciflcness and imwdiacy, but the truly aesthetic element is seen as an motionless expression of unchalfengfability authority, Ward therefor= uses formalism as a fivalue-fr~eg' herraeneutic, a method r,f interpreting the irtlage, ratket than responding to it with his own emotions,

The psychological bfas~sof this type of criticism clearly stem fro& +_he major biases of the larger aiscourse fra uhich

formalism takes its beari~gs,a discourss which, with its noble

image of civilized mankicd, is bound to fiad bed pans, anid other references to excretion, irrelevant aria embarrassincj,2*2 Ward's

easy and open acceptance cf this embarrassment, which rests on

a bcdy-glind dichotomy he glories in tgainta~ning, precludes the

possibility that the Weston photograph is what it appears to be cn the surface - a bold statement of visual eroticism that draws its aesthetic and conceptual power from the deepest regions ~f natural bcdily functions, Ward's readicy does in fact deny the

icsight, whick Westor. himself might have realized, that, childrsn

azd adults in North Americar, society are generally socialized intc feeling ashamed of their genital and excretory organs, and that the Newtonian universe has f ittls room for what Fritz Prrls callee the fvexplosive layerw of human emotior-s - those intense, ucpredictable, uncontrollable outbursts of pain, ecstasy, grief,

anger, laughter, tears, and orgasms, all of which are more "animalw than "rati~nal*~in quality,2*3 flard's assessment of the Egg mn is sealPy an argumeot that W~stoc, or at least the image, is part of that very process of sublimation acu denial,

The opfratioz of formlist criticism, as far as this exa~pie shcws, is an altrtost Augustinian icsisteace that photographs work I

by referring to an i~visiblereality abovs and beyond the

pbctograph itself, and the object or event it is said to be representing, This i~sistence,articulated ia thc f~ssilized doctrines of ncrmative idealism, uciversalistu, associationism,

imitation, ut ~ictgrapoesis, and reliqiouslv-inspired morals,

is historical1y ar,d ideolcgicafly past of the much older claim

that ghk& wuorfcs, the world of flesh and ewtioc, is a shadow or irf~ricrcopy of an absclut~arid tsa~scendr;atreality from wkich

art and life derive their ultimat~meaning. Perhaps the most

immediate and telling critique of this belief is not just its

record as the aesthetic of ~stablishedsocial powers, but the fact that, even in its cwn tesms, it makes art itself finally irrelevact - despit~claims of autoncmous value - to the comforts of religion. The wcrking photographer Is therefore brought to question the extent, to which forrualism, in theory acd practice, is uncocsciousiy

hostile to the alements i~ his or her art which are fresh, spcntaneous, acd courageas aff irmaticns of the world that we human beings actuaffy live and love in. Image and Esserce

The social history of phctcgraphy, and th& scurce of all of its meanings, h&s, ia this thesis, been ascribed to cfauges in ecommic structures, social relationstips, technology, epistemology, religion acd aesthetics, mostly on she theoretical

2evel. At this poifit the^ it becomes more important to relate i~telfectualdiscourse to the actualities of social practice, and ' to show hdv the ideas that Descartes, Kepler, Calvin, Lewton and others were ennucciating cocnect to the experiences cf images that

European cuf ture was undergoing. Those experiences, which bet.ray

this construct the r term fetishizing has tao ovsrlappif,g meanings.

i I The first, acd root meaning, ccmes directly from aarx's descripticn' cf the f~tisbizingof commodities in a capitalistic economic system, or the grcceess whereby commodities 'la~pearas independent heicgs exdowed with life, and entering into relation both with one acother and the huraan race,"'** In th~section of Capital which discusses the division of labor, Harx pictured the separation of producers and consumers which results in a situation where the former never see the final outcome of their labor, acd vice v?rsa, so that production becomes an absolutised process. Using an optical referenc~,Plarx acccunts for the mayical sense of autonony that surroucds commodities as displayfd in the marketplace:

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing. simply because in it the social charact~rof men's labcr apFears to them as an objective character sza~pedupon the product of that faktor; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of thfir own labor is presented to them as a social relation, existirg not tetwser t hemselvss, but betvesn the products of their labor,, ifn the same way the light fro& an object is perceived by us cot as the subjer;ti~eexcitatiort cf our 3 optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside Z he eye itself,**S

Advertising, uhich continualfy obscures the nature and labor ccnditions ucder which comutouities are produced, is the prime instance of this fetishization.

A second sense of the term "fetisha is the sexual me, which

Sigmund Freud discussed a* lecgth in his Three Contributions wrote that,

We are especially i~pressedby those cases in which the norm1 sexual object [i,e,person) is substituted for another, which, though related to it, is totally unfit for the ncrmal sexual aim, The substitute for the sexual object is generally a part ot the body but little adapted for sexual purposes, such as the foct or hair or sow inanimate object (fragments of clothing, undfruear) , which has some demonstrable relatior, to the sexual person, preferably t~ the sexuality of the same,, .The case becomes pathological only when the striving fos,the fetish fixes itself beyond such J determicatioris and takes the place of the ~ormals~xual

ai~;)or again, (when the fetish disengages itself fro@ xL t'Ce persox ccncerned ard itself kecomes a sexual object,) These are the general determinants ror the transition of merf variatiocs of the sexual ~ristinctto pathological aberrations.2'6 Again, attef.tion is drawn here to the process of -- -

The emotional super-charge plac~du@on outward appearances, especially as indicators of invisible inuard essunces, has alfeady

been documented with regard to Newtonian science and ca~vi~istic rig. The study cf the world's ul'tiaate reality, whether

m2 teria3. or spiritual, t"rom the appearances of things*? was part

of the Eenaissa~ceand Enlight~nmentprogram in art also, But

this method of inquiry is preccnditionad historically by the ..

attempts to create a world of fine appearances disti~ctfrom and I,

superior to everyday existence, and to bind all sonsual experience

into the OR@ faculty of vision. This tendency, as expressed in

capitalistic societies, seems to have arisen whenever the middle

classes began to look socially upward to a courtly aristocracy

for their models of fashion, taste, dress, and acceptable behavior,

As a historicaf trend it became evidecz even before the Baroque,

and manif f sted itself aost readily wheu class lines were klurrad

or riearly extinguished in the course cf econoinic and ~olitical alliances, When capital supplanted lam as the primary source of wraith in Europe, the aristocracy sften conceuded its depecdence

On kh€ bourqeoise by ennobling financi~rsand industrialists* They

in t-urn used their riches to buy into a iifestyle pr&viausly restricted to the tlpper classes. The results wsrti, and still are, the behaviors associated wzth upward mbility - snobbishness, \ preterticusness, jaalousy, envy, conspicuous consumprior. - all satirized acd attacked by tke leading rtav~lisr,~of thr, riineteenth cer.tusy: Dickens, Eialzac, Plaubert, Gogol and 0thers.2~~What these ~ovelistsrealized was that new Htonsy dobs not huy the birth. and breeding of its older predecessors, idhas the bourgeoise buy instead are Sbe Sypearances of a sophisticated and refined heritage, the cont~odityknown as f4glanour**.z*~

The quest for glamour exyscssed itself in many areas because of the fact that beauty acd ha~dsomeaess- the attractiveness between the sexes - was traditiocally a class question, aside from tkf other facts that involve the pursuit and display of social status, Cosmetics, banned by the Church, were seintrcduced to

Europe by the Crusaders returning fro@Arabic cour,tries, Their initial cost and rarity want that aristocratic women were not only healthier, better nourished, and fr~erfrom strecuous physical labor, but that they were rmw able to embellish their looks even wore than Powsr-class wonen, This state or affairs remained ccwtant u~tilthe stventeen bundrads %hen large cosaetic factories were first established in England and contine,?tal Eurepe, and boxh sexes were encouraged to the wEaP~saleuse of pvdfrs, pomades, perfum~s, and perukes, The efforts of the upper classes to keep the~selvesehevatsd from the ~ercharts, and th~irattempts in turn to keep up wftk the latest fashicn, ev+ntualiy made the 4xtersive use of cosmetics a norma, rather than extreme of social custom,

The use of cosmetics was granted such importance that a number of faaous beautics died of blood poisoning Cue to contir.aus use, despite medical sarnings, of leaded face- povder, These practices

Efourished at the same time that food coloration by means of chemical additives was first &guc in EurOp&.2*9

The example of clothing is Even Bore dramatic, ana the emphasis oc appearages accounts for the foppery and dandyism that existed well into the Victorian era, High-heels, pointed toes, stockings, leggicys, corsets, wigs, earrings, jewellery , and si~ilarfeatures for mea and women alike first appeared during the Bannerist period, as a respocse to the tremendous wealth and tides cf individuafism sweeping Italy at that point in history,The extremes cb fashion ir, clothing go froltl the bustles and hooped skirts of the court of Louis XI8 to the twesty-one inch corseted waist of Elizabeth

Tts ladies-ln-waitixg, Balzacqs story of a womar who drives her husband backrupt in order to buy a dress to be worn for one evening may have been a fictional. tale, but it Mas hardly an ~xaggeration.

It is also from court life cf this period, with its uneasy admixtures of royal acd mercantile elements, that one gets the ectire gamut cf double injunctions to both put on a ycod appearance

{"Clothes make the manii), arid cot to be asceived by the apparances of others (uBever judge a book by its cov~r"). The lushzess of

Darqous art oftex overshadows the Shakosperean images of life as an endiess succession of tor-men, frauds, cheats, impcsiors acd seducers,

As soat critics and historiazs have noted,' the phctograph often

Eucctions as a machine for the mass-proauction of glarrcur. / One of portrait pkotography's oldest slogans is, $+If you're beautiful we'll take you, if no+ wet21 make you," and studio owners stressed the idea. that the lowly could be pkiotograpfied in the same ~ostures, vhich the same props and backgrounds as their social. superiors.

For this reason early daguerreotype studios were veritable museums of high calture,

most elegantly furnished, perfect palaces, #orthy of co~parisonwith the enchanted dwellings of Eastern fabulous heroes. &arbla, carvfd in colu@ns, animated by the chisel cf the sculptor, sumptuous fraaes enclosing costly paintings; the feet press uithout: noise the softest carpets; gilded cages with bird5 f rc~every cliae, warbling amldst exotics of the rarest kir~d, which diffuse their peafume and expand their flowers under the softened fight of the sun. This Is the American studio.nso

The ce~nectionsto the social elite were made quite explicit, wSusyended on the walls, we firid Daguezreotypes of Psesiden ts, Generxls, Kings, Queens, Nrsblemec - and Dore ~roblermen - 5en an3 wornso of all nations and profes~ions.~2s~Eva the display of the finished product was part of this process, as daguerreotype pictures "were encased in plastic copies of noted paitkings or ir, carned l~atheror in stamped aim- mache as a general rule8q, depending on the taste ar.d budget of the subject. Irt fact, ffstyles of picture cases usually determined p3cture costsH Bore than the quality of th~actual imges,zsZ fn this manner photography was maag to democratize the cacons and trappiags of aristocratic portraiture,

It is typical and interesting that the family photo album has its origin partly in the same class-conscious motivations, The earliest albu~scontain not only portraits of the immediate fank3.y

1 but cqgaes-d@-visi&g and photos of political leaders and other celebrities. The idea of cartes-fig-vishtr was a visual outgrowth of the upper-class calling card which was an acce~tedpart of social fife for over two centuries, The photogra~hicversion was first initiated by the Duke of Parma in 1857, spread to Faris W~EE

Mapoleon 1x1 made it fashionabls, a~dreached America two years later when Bason ~othschildwas the first so photcyra~hed,253One

A~ericarncommentattpr aptly describe2 card photographs as "the social currency, %he sectimental 'green-backs* of civilization,n's*

Photo albu~ssucceeded card Sraps and baskets as a method of collecting 2 nd presenting those **green-backsw Leafing through the fa~ifyalbum became a standard ritual of Victorian home life,

3rd photograbs of the Queen, ministers, clergy, and athletic heroes were sources cf emulation and identification,asS

As an impcrtant aside, the other orxyin of the photo album has its roots in Calvinistic mcrafity, as the albums were frcgufitly family Bibles witk pcckets into which portraits of tke family could be i~strted. As a talisman ~f the faaily rekigion the photo album was venerated and k~ptalongside the Bible, B Boataria settler cf the 1860's wrote home that,

Our cabin measured 15x20 feet in the clear, The logs were chinked and yaixted with clay. The floor was of earth, beater, hard and smooth - a box cupboard held our stock of dishes and cooking utensLls, Beside it stood the churn, The flour barrel was converted icto a center-table whereon reposed the iamify Bible and photograph albuso with their white lace covers.256

That the camera was somekow god-like in fusction was a ccmmonly expressed cpicion during the first decadss of photographic histcry,

TErcughout tho Yictosian era the photograph was not spoken of as the work of man or machinery, but as "t?;e pencil of NatureH. Being photrsqraphed was slat unlike the experienced of being scrut5zhod for oners morality, One photographer, praising his camera, claimed tkat it was praising his caEera, claimed that it was

truth itself, ghat he {gig) told rae was as gcspel, No missepresentations, no deceits, no equivocations, He saw the world without prejudices; he looked upon humanity with an +ye single to justice. What he saw was faithfully reported, exact, and vithout blemish. He could read and prcve character in a nan% face at sight. To his eye a rctgus was a rogue; the honest man, when found, was recognized and properly estimated,zs?

The identification of the person with his or her photographic iwage created a &umber of superstitioos beliefs, some of which still flaurisb, At the beginnicg of tnis century, #'ir. parts 05

'MEW Hampshist? it is considere5 unlucky to have a photograph cnlarqed while the crigZnal is sti>i livin(jei?2"8 An a similar

W~G,"If the photograph of your busband, taken before marriage,

fades, it is a sign that his love for you is nn +hc wane-*'zJ9 And if a photograph of sonteoce fell fro@vher~ it Mas hanging, it

portecded sure death for the original subjsct ,260

The moral dimecsiozs of this identificatioz also stem from kbf EYE of Ccd ir, Protestant religion, Oliver Wendell Hofaes 11809

\ - 94) used ths camera as a metaphor in describing how sins committed in secret are eventually unearthed for judgement,

There is nothing that happens, you know, which must not inevitably, and which does n~tactually, phctograph itself in every co~ceivableaspect a~ldin aPf dimensions. The infinite galleries of the Past await but one brief process and all their pictures will be called out and fixed forever. We had a curious ilfustratior of the great fact ot a very huable scale, #hen a certain bookcase, long standing In one place, for which it was kuilt, was remcved, there was the exact inage on the wall of the whole, and of aany of its portions, But in the ids st of this picture was acothes - the precise outline of a map which bad hung on the vaff befcre the bookcase was built, We had all forgotten everythi~g about the ntap until. re saw its photograph oc the wall, Then we rememnbered it, as some day al: other are may rerne~bera sin which has beec built over and covered up, when ibis lower universe is pulled away fro@before the wall of Infinity, where the wrong-doing stands self- recordedr 261

Nor was there anything ur.corn@on ic aolmeshquatioc of photography with a kind cf immcrtalfty. The oldest slogan in studic photography is, rtSecura the shadow 'ere the substance fade," and Sanuel Morse, a friend of Daguerre himself, used this them@ Hew cold must bs the heart tbat does not love, How fickle "he heart that wishes not to keep the memory of the loved oces for after-tines, Such cold and fickle hearts we dc not audress. Eut all. others are advised to pfccure miniatures &t Professor dorse9s Daguesrsotype Estabiishmentb2*z

A few years aft~rEorse wrote this, the daguersectype industry ia: Awerica received a tremendous econcmic boost f run the outbreak of the Civil Uar as. #every boy called into the ar&y %anTed momentoes to f eave the folks at home and it is more tkan likely that- OL~or two similar mcateetoes when with hinib More than one card ~hotographwas found among the huntan wreckage left or, the field after the srook~of; battle had cleared a~ay,~*z63 Bt the war's e~d,a cemetery reform movement in Amrica proposed that daguerrizctypes of the deceased be placed oii every grave.

If on every tombstone ther~could be seen the life- likeness of the sleeper, as with sparkling eya, and noble xien, he walked "a man among men;" os of some gentle lady, whose kindly and generous impulses could be read in every feature of th~"face divine;I9 or of the angel-child, whose jcyous laught, and innocent smile speaks of the loss to its bereaved and loving parents - and of its passage from earth to heavsn - how much Eorr inviting would then bs the last resting places of the departed, - could we thus seek tha **living" among the *$deadH and on every tombstone see the living representative of the sle~per.264

It is for all these reasons that. the Ntruthfulnessw of the phctograpk came to have iiaportant emotiunal meanings. As one his to ria^ remarked of Victoriar portraiture, duc ofa late and

'URE mixed TEA^

John Homiman

WLL W?lGlTr wilhout Pukage. Onc Ounrt nt 31. qd. 2jd. HORNIMAWS IT,' Mt #t. pba aaulr, Mh* dllh ~mlc~,rbw& 1r

Perhaps one needs to renieinb3r the historical fact that phctography was invented at that n~oaentin the Industrial

Revolution when the rapid urbanization of Eurcpean cities created thf phwnonmencn of rtmass rnaft*', the ancnyraaus individual, the face in the crowd that had very few chances for a~ythingbut first impressions. The situation of the individual being photographed i~ a studio setting was rot unlike that faced by ~anufacturers ccmpeticg for attention on the open ccmgodity mazket. Since consumers had alaost no way of cogparing one brana with dozens like it, business in the nir,o.teen-th century invented the idea of packaging and advertising, which rtteant that the outsides of products becaae Bore important, and oftec mre expensive, than their inner contEcts, Is a culture which alternately believed in physiognogy - judging a person's character by %heir face - and phrenology - judging it by the shape of their skull - it is not surprising that the experiencz of being photographed was fraught are those of a less sophisticated century, Anxieties about the po wef of yhstc graphic representation stiii permeate the studio situation, and the Eastman Kodak Company advises professional photographers that, lgtfie ordeal of hav1z.g a formal portrait done I is, to most pfopl~,one of ths acst agonizing experier~es.~267

T~Emajcrity of adults who enter a studio for a portrait sitting are o~fyhalf convinced that this is what ttey want To do. They enter with trepidation, anxious a bout their apFearance ard perhaps about the expense involved. IF they aanage some relaxation in the waiting roont, their tenseness is likely to return at peak Eorce when they face the cawsra l~os, This tension is widely admitted.268

Portraituse, accordicg to Kodakas findings, is rarely a self-initiaesd activity or exercise in narcissism, It is much more cft en an other-airected or family venture, which means that portraits will be given to the psople who most define the subjectas exfstefrce: '*A person's portrait is il-.teeded to please some onG else, not cnese3.f,"2*9 And that some on& else may also be the depersonalized usrfd of public relations, since portraits are often used for tkeir comniodity, i, e. business value. Rcdak ~stimates that, S'Busicess reasoas account fcr thirty psrcent of all the studic pcrtraits taken of aec. Hany are used for publicity

~uT~Qs~s.~Z~~As a consequence, "adult portraiSs are more ccmmonlf fr?ur;d ir, certain occupations l groups - professional, technical, safes, managerial, and supervisory - as compared with farms, machine opera* ors, and lab0rers,~'2?1 It is therefore among these professio~aland educated pours that reports a high level of acxiety vith r~gardto sitting i~ front of the cmera in the studio situation. It is in full knowledge of what ends ti13 portraits themselv~sssr ve that Kodak advises its protessional clients that v " the aim of photography is not just to flatter, but to midealizet* the subjrrct.272 In a society in which public relatio~sgrow at L- the expense of humn relations, photography must assuae the burden I af creating a world of comtnmoditized irxtages, Perhaps the final word belongs to sichard Niron*s presidentiii campaign manager:

id@ have to be very clear on this point: that the reqponse is to the i~age,not to the aan, sinca 99 percent of the voters have co contact vith the Ban, It's not what's there that counts, it's what's projected - and carrying it one step further, it's not vEat he proj~ctsbut rather what the voter receives, It's not the man we have to change, but rather the received impression, And this impression often depends more on the medium and its use than it does on the candidate himself ,273

This perceptive statement, made by one of the professionals of the business, is a fairly straightfoward declaration that the techniques of modern media wust be used to create a network cf deceptive images whose ~xplkcitpurposs is to @ask disconcerting informatioc. On another level, this statement co~fir@sthe argument that photography is constantly used by the institutional ' guardbns of cufturally-defined normality, such as the state, church, family, military, and scientific and medical ~rofessions,

Tte use sf photography as a handinaiderr of roidkical authority, the marketplace, and eccccmic privilege surfaces roost disti~ctly,

IG terms of both style and Itunction, in the kinds of chotouhaphs that are mde to reflect a socially-acceptabie self-i~age, whether as promise or actuality, i,e., the wedding photegraph, forwal studio portrait, fashion or advertisicg lay-out, The suppossd wtruthqsof tb~phctograph i& these iristances is directly linked tc the construction of politically-motivated images of a specific ideology, and it is agairst tbis vast construction of artificas that photographs exposing aL uncounterfeited reality ~ightthen * h~ measured. 'This thesis began by asking the relatively simple questioc

cf what mk~sa photograph work, and kas touched U~OKLareas in

sociology, the history of art and religion, the philosophy of sciecc~,acd psychoacalytic spcculatict in search of an acswer.

The authoritative *ftruthfulnessfl of photography was shown to be

a ~roduct, not just of the imagess inherent characteristics, but

of a set of cultural experiecces atd exprctations which have to

dc with various models, primarily scientific, of visual b r~presentation, Thf epistemological core of this thecry was then traced in terms of its implications for celigion, aesthetics, and

social practice. The "-truthJf of the photograph is a quality which

spars from th~most cerebral and d~liherateintsrpretations cf

tke photograph as a scientific docu~ert, to the anxieties that

surface frcat +he unconscious in the studio pcrtrait situation,

, The ~truthfulness~of photography must Sherefore be regarded, not

as ar? absolute value, but as a phecomenon which assuBes different

values uithl a specific contexts of meaning.

Finally, the photograph was considered within the •’ramwork cE cultural atteapts to create a world of commoditized acd sexualized appearances above the world of unidsalized realities.

The thesis therefore ccncludes with the suggestio~that the

distikcti~~quality of photography as a creative art form involves

the attempts hy varicus individuafs to break through this world by whict this has beer, successtully achieved lies beyond the scope

j of this particular thesis. Footnotes

Rea2ers am referred to Pfilltoqmpher magazine {formerly B.C. -Phctcsra~her] , Summer 1975 to Fall 1977; Egg2 Coast Beview, January 1975 to September 1976; and Z2sychocu3.tura3, re vie^, Winter -.

1978,

Preface

John L,Ward, lftje Criticism of I?h?&qrd~hy as hi, Gainesville,

University of Florida Press, 1970,

A.D.Cofemiln, "Because It Feels So Good Bhari I Stopw, Camera --35, Volume 19, Numbfr 7, Qctcb~r1975, pp,26ff.

6 Ijavid Madden, '"The lecessity for an Aesthetics of Popular

Culture", Jcarrial gg Popular Cultuyrx, Volume YII, Nu~ber1, Suimer

1973, pp.9-13; Pierre Bourdieu, et,al,, pg && gqf~,Paris, hs

Editions DE Minuit, 1965,

7 Harcld Hcser:he;rg, T'fig Aious Object, N,Y., Horizon Press, 1966,

p. 17. 9 Though this item might be more suitable Sor MRiplbytsBelieve

It Or KO+", it appeared an an article by Robert Pincus ad&m sr titled itVitc Acconci and the Conceptual Performar,csa, in

,,,,,,,Artforum 1 Volume X, Number 8, April 1972.

1 1 Susax? Soctag, Aqainst Irrterpreta%iof~,N.Y ,, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 199, p17.

12 Baynard Solomon in Earxisnn and Bft, H.Y., Vintage Books, 1973, p. 19.

13 See J~raldZaslove, "Counterfeit and the USES of LiteratureJ*#

,,,,Vest ,,,,Coast ,,,,,t Beview Volume 3, Number 3, firinter 1969.

Chapter I: The Photograph and the Icon

14 for a metaphysical. cverview of formafism see Stephen C. Pepper, ----World gi~~*x%s: & Study j:, Eviaence (Univsrsity of Califcrcia Press, 7970) ; fcr its application to aesthetics, Pepper's The

Basis Criticha in University 1945). --vsf thg Arts (Harvard Press,

Far ~or~ternp~rarytrends on formafism, see Yiceor Erlich, Russian

Pormaiis~(The Hague, #cuton ar.d Company, 1965), and Ewa {The Haguo, Moutoc and Company, 1971), The quotation is from

Hasold Osborne, Aesthetlcg ggd ~hcoi~rAn Histnr-jcal

16 Rudolf Arnheim, "On the Nature of Photographgfl, Critical fnquiry, Volume I, Number 1, September 39712, pp, lt29 - 161. ArnBeimrs essay deals with 35m~cameras exclusiveiy, a~dcomyletfly

ignores the larger, tripod-based formats, a bias which excludes

tha lncre foraal. and constructed mthods of photography,

la James Eorcoman, "~uriswversus pictorialism: the 135 years'

warr', artscanada #l92- 195, Dec~mber 1974, p, 73,

z0 Examples night include x-ray crystallography, cloud-chamber experiaents, and meteorclogy.

Eastman Kodak Company, "Portrait Surveyv*, Studio Liqri, reprint, n,d, z4 The Eastman Kodak CoEpany, Rochester No Y., 1966, pp.Q7 - 50.

Visicn as experience differs nn two inportant ways fro@ *'phctographic proj~cticn", It does cot rsgistez the complete set of individual detail contained in the retinal image. Evidence has heen given %o show that percepti~l;does not start fsoa particulars, which are secondarily processed into abstractions by the intf lloct, kat from generalities.. ,another disti~ctionbetveer! retinal image and visual experia~ceconcerns prspectiv~. The image created by the lenses of the eye shows the ~rsjectivedistorticns of a photograph, vher~asir vision cot much influence of distance or size and shape is cbserved. Ecst objects are seen approxi~atelyin objective shape and size: a rectangular suitcase looks rectangular, and distant persons ifi a roo& look nc smaller than those close to the observer,

Rudolf Arrzheint, gs;d IfTsual 'erceptim, Univ3rsity of California

Press, 1954, pp, 430-31.

2s Marshall #cLuhan, lf! Gutenberq Galaxy, University of Toroata

Press, ' 3962, pp-36-38.

29 Nathan Rnobler, xfrg Visuaf Dialoqug, M,Y,, Rolt, Rlnehart and Winston, nod,, p4153,

30 E.H.Gombrich, Art and Illusi,ori, N.Y.. Pantheor 1961, pg.63-90.

32 John Dewey, Theory ~f &t&gptiqn, University of Cbicagc Press,

1939, o~.~j~..

33 The term **ideal types1 is defi~edby flax aeber for use in

comparative scciolay y:

An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuatiq of one of more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discreet, more or less preseEt and occasionally absent concr@ individual pheconiena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints intc a unified analytical construct, fr its conceptual purity, this mental construct cannot be found eapirically anywhere in reality,

Edward A4Stils and Her?ry Adinch, Gleccoe, Free Press, 1949, p.90.

Perhaps much of the cionfusioc about photography cam-2s f foin the sloppy use of the word t'pbotographicfl as an ideal type; in this work a photograph is an any fixad image made the the purposes oE representation by means of a cainera, lens, and sensitized emulsior..

This includes x-rays and photograms but not the cin?ma or video.

3* ".;.th~ essential features of early Christian art are,.: its impulse towards spiritualizat~onand abstraction, its preferance for fiat, bodiiess, shadovy forms,. its deisands ros Irrontalily,

solean%ty, and hierarchy, its indifference to the organic life

of flesh and hlond, its lack of ir+~res*Ir the rkzrscte~isti~,

the and the Arrold Hauser, Social - Individual, ~~ecies.~~ xhr; r ----Historj~ gg Ax$, translated by Stanely Godman, Volum-i3 1, NoY., Vintage Books, 1957, p, 123.

36 See for example Zouis Sipley, g?qym&yf_s _Gggah Inventcrs,

Philadelphia, The Aaericae Bus&u& of Photography, 1965,

37 Thomas Kuhn, ZBf Structure of Scientific Bevc~uticns, University of Chicago, 1970, pp.10 - 34.

3e ----%bidt, p.10.

39 Lync @hit~Jr., gpqie~&&Technofoqy q@ gocia1 Change, Oxford

University Press, 1962, pp.79ff. I$

Osee Peter L,Berger and Thomas Luckitia~n, g& social Ccnstructim gf gealitg, M. Y ., Doublfday, 1965, pp.23ff.

41 H,P.LfOrange Form a@ gix& &&fg $he Late Roman Em~irr, New Jersey, Princeton University, 1965, 4a Asturo Castigfioni, A History ef k&dicCxi%, translated by

E. E.K,Krumbhaar, N, P, , Alfred W.Knopf, 1941, pp. 242-257, 288-487, se Genesis 1:3 2: 18, Standarad Edition,

"9 Jchn 1 :1, Standard Edition,

60 Richard ravendish, The Black Ag_ts, B.Y,, Capricoxc, 1958, up .cite

62 R~veka+ions1 :8, Standard Edition,

bs 3"It should a150 be said that a holy image of Our Savior partakes fr! i%s~rototypr~~ (The Patriarch Kicepfionur;, c.262) , and cf. Cionysns the Aseopagite, St,Basil, d~hnDamascene, and othsrs, Chapter If: The Eye as nachinery

69 P.PI.Godfsey, Eistory cf gtalian Bfatinq 1250 - 1800, N.Y., Tapfinger Publishers, 1965, p.2.

-----T~chzlcloyy, Vclurne I, Penguic, 1963, pp. 113 - 147.

71 Tartakiewicz, y.177.

72 Godfrey, p.14 - 22,

73 Hauser If, p.15.

74 Lbid, p. 16. az Jacqueline Tyrnhitt, $*TheBovicq EyeH, in Edaund Carpenter

ar d Bershalf BcLukan, editors, Explorarr~ps&& Co~Lunrcatin~

Bcston, Reacoc Press, 1960, p.94,

88 Claude Levi-Stsauss quoted in Joh~Berger, i4us gf Seeing,

Loxdoc, Pwqu5.n Books acd the BBC, 7972, p.86*

Parar3iso. Cantos PXX-SO - 42, acd XXXIII. 100 - 102, translated by Dorothy L.Sayers and Barbara Reynolds, Baltimore. Penguin Books. 91 Vascrs Ponchi, xk NaturG Lfqht, translated by B.Barocas,

Harvard University Press, 1970, p.73.

94 AsR.EaPf, z! Scientific 8evoluti.m 1500 - 1300, Boston, D-eaccn Press, 1962, pp-34 - 72-

97 Arthur Kaestler, S&sxualkers, Pelican, 1968, pp.227-427; XoncDo, p.87ff .; E,J,Dijksterbuis, The ~echanizationgf the ?dorfd Pictup, translated by C,Dikshoorn, Oxford, CBarendon Press, 1961, pp. 303-323.

99 Basco Bcnchi, Optics: zsience of Y~shog, translated by

Edward Rcs~n,New York University, 7957, p147. On Galilee see

KOES~PE~pp.431-503; Dijksterhuis ppr333-358; Rcnchi, g& Nature -of Liq& p*95f. - 417: Rene Descartes, Discourses nn flekhocl, trarslated by Paul

101 Descartes, B~uvres,edited hy Adaa and Tannery, fX.321, Paolo

Rossi, ~hilcsc~by,Technoloqy, th~Arts &q the Early Riddle

Fkg, M.Y., Harper and Row, 1970, p,32. Cf, also Castiglioni, 1 ----History of Fedici&g p8484ff; Colin B,Turbayne, The 0th of ---Metaphor, Yale aniversiry Press, 3962, pp-202-208. Fcr the use of mechanistic imagery in advertising see Barshall McLuhan, Xbg ----Be chaoical Bride , N.Y., Faanguard Books, 1951, pp.93-103; 123-131.

103 Descartes, Principis 1-45, tsanslat~ciby Laurence S. Laflew,

N.P,, Library of the Liberal Arts, 1960, p.70,

lo4 SE~&nthcvrsy gilden, system Structurs, London, Tavistock,

1972, p-223 n20,

10s Quoted in Roestler, p.476.

106 Foucault p. 136,

107 Bergclr, Hays of Seeinq, pp.89-91; Billiarn Scott, The ------Cocstitition and ---Finance pf EnqJj.., Scpg&&sh, &pa Izisb

;fo_Q&-Stock Ccatpanies to 1720, Gllouchestar, &IS~., Peter Smith

Coapany, 1968, pp-15-46. It is interesting that even as perceptive a critic as Bergrr neglects tc meetion the death" heau that Holhein painted into the bottom center - h;s ~ttstastatementon what provir&cethG ambassadors really came from, i.e, Death,

110 James E,bBePls, 3312 Circle of Knc~iedge~Chicago, Newberry

Xi krary , 1968, p.5ff. ; Robrst Ccllinson, &~cyclopedfas: Their ---Histo= Throusk the 4qze, N. Y,, Hafner Publishing Company, 1966, p*20ff,

Zx3 Quoted from Koestfer p.344,

Di jksterbus pp, 477-493; Koestler pp.504-553; Hafl, ibid.,

11s Sir Isaac Newton, g& t!atkeiuaticah princi~lasof Natural ---Philoso_~hp, N, P., Philosophical Library, p.446. Hausef 11.140-3; Arthur Nu and Bina C.Rlein, P~terBEueqei

---the Elder , B.P., Hacmillae CoBpany, 1968, pp.92-95, 162-165,

120 Foucault p,129,

523 The quotation is from Lucets 1936 prospectus for LIFE,

repririted in David E,Scherrnan, editor, T& Best of LIFE, N,Y.,

Avori Books, 1973, p.3.

12* iialSer S. Gibson, Hieronyra- Bosch, Lcndun, Thames and Hudsoc,

1973, pp.33-37,

HetherPacds, N.V,ServTve, 1971, ~p.c&,; Joshua Trachtenberg, ------J~wisfi flaqic agd Sg~efstition, Yale Ur,irrersity Press, 1962, p.80. ; Henry Harper Aart, "The Eye in Symbol and Symptomqq, Psychoanalytic

Egview, Yolums 36, Nuraber 1, 7949, pp,l-21, '34 Prcverbs 5:23; Psa3.m~ 33: 18, 3Y;16, 34: 15, 34: 16, Standard E6 iticn . 1 46 ibid., IEI,xxiv, 1,

150 See Perry Miller and Thomas B,Johnson, ~ditoss,The Puritans,

W, P,, Harper and Pou ,1955, pp.729 - 737, Tha Ey& of Gcd on the dollar bill is a Masonic symbol, quite apt for the Founding Fathers who included Rashingtcr*, ths land surveyor, Jef fesson, the architact, and Benjamin Franklin, the experimenter in optics and

electricity, The expression wEou\rou Order Secforutafl is the title of one of Eacongs volumes, and the quote, "annuit coeptiP ("32

has favored our undertakings*') is •’roar Virgil *s Aeaeid, To behold, use cr perceive arry exte~isionof onrselves in tcchnoicyical for@ is necessarily ts embrace it. To fistec to radic or to read the printed page is to accept these extensions of ours~ivesinto our personal systeta and to undergo the "closuren of displacement of pircegtior, that foiloss automaticaliy, It is this continuous etubrace of our own technology in Gaily use that puts us in the Marcissus role of subliminal awarecess and nuiabness in r~laticnto these images of oursef ves.

153 Ernest G.Schachtel, wOza Bemory and Childhood ~&nesia**,in

English vocabulary, and equally the vocabulary of ether Western languages, is coaspicuously poor in words for -the description of smells and kastes. Even when it comes to the flavor of vine or of a dish, in spite of the great material arid historical role of drinking a1.d eat icy, f anguage is quite incapable of expressing any but the crudest differences in taste. A vine is said tc be dry, sweet, robust, fhe, full and so on, kut nCne of these vords enables cnc to i~agi~ethe flavor and bouquet of the wine. Compared with this poverty of words, the vocabulary for the description of the visible world and its forms and colors is much richer.. .Fcr these seascrks, the experience schtcata for slaell and tas-te ser,sations arz rela tiveiy undeveloped.

The children were always put into a regular mode of living, ir, such things as they were capable of, from their birth; as ir dr~ssicg,u~dressing, charging their linen, etc., .a regular course of slesping.. . (etc.) @hen they turred a year cfd [and some before) they were taught to f~arthe rod, and cry softly,, . as soon as they were grown pretty strong, they were confined to ttrer meals a day,. ,t hfy were suffered to eat ano drink (small beer) as much as they uoufd; but not to @ail for anything.,, rising cut of their places, or gcing out of the room was nc+ permitted unless for good cause; and running into the yard, garden, or street, without leav2 was always esteesed a capital offence.

Quoted in Bogna R,Lorence, "Parents and Children in

Eigfitce~th-CenturyEuropeH, Eistory ~f Chiidhgg& Quarter& Yoiume 2, Number 1, Summer 19'34, pp, 1 - 30 (quotation from page 16) . In the sase issue see also the article on the childhood of Johc

Bcsfey. Cf, af so St$~@r!R.Sfftith, **Religion and tte Conceptio?! of Youth in Seveotoecth-Century Engfacdf\ kbjg., Volurne 2, EJunlber

4, Spring '1975, pp. 493-516. Elcdieval paaiatric authorities roco~mend~dsensory stimulation for iafants including rubbing the hcdy and Siabs with oil, cursing, singing, rocking, and Balding the cEkld to keep it warm, See Eichael Goodich, fiBarthoPomaeus

?-inglictas on Childhood Rearir,gs9, ibjd., Volume 3, Number 1, Surnlaar 159 Erik Erikson, Yomq &g~,~&y, W,P,, !d,k,Norton, 3962,

pp, 244-250; Norman O,Brown, &fg &gains$ Wpa, W, Y., vintage

Bcoks, 1959, pp, 202-233; Erich Proma, ggcpgg Egqg Freedom, M, Ye,

nvor- Bcoks, 1965, pp. 84-122, ar,d g!g reart gfl Ell, N, Y, , Rarper and Row, 1964, pp,35-69.

Chapter 111: T~G~estheltics of the ~ational

That which is **accordingto naturen meant, first and faremost, that which corresponds to this assu~pticn of uniformity-, .ia the most frequent of the nomative uses of the tern "nature**in the Enlightenment, the prizcipal elemsct in the sigsiification of the wcrd is uniformity, Despite its sixty-odd other senses, it was ~rkraarilyand chiefly because of this contotation that *4caturettwas the sacred word of the Enlightenaent,

Arthur O-Lcvpj~fl, Essays &E gistor1 of- gdeas, Baltimore, The of Adp13, Iowa State University Press, 1959, ~p.129 -173.

63 Aristotl~, PegZf~g,TY., 3 - 25, it Richard HcKson, editor,

1b5 Foucault p.131. 11368, p.78,

172 Thomas Craven, "Art and the Camesan, zI%g Natigg 118, April

16, 1924, p-27.

178 ninor white, editor, f.Eugene Sairq, N.Y,, Aperture, 1969,

p. 11,

180 Filliam Guild Howard, t*gs gictttra PoesisH, g.g.&.a., XXTY

(1909), pp.40-723; Rensselafr M.Lae, g Pictugi3. g3esi.s: Tjlg ----Humanistic -----Th~~crx of Pahtigl;, N.Y,, D. W, Norton, 1967; Rersly G. Saisselin, fig& Pictu~gads: Dubois to Diderct88, Journal of

Aestheti&~3119 && ~siticism,XX., pp, 146-56, 181 S$e Leslie Fiedler, Lg~p2nd Death g& Brn~ricg~EE~,

N*K*, Stein and Day, 1966. ppa23-61,

182 Visual literacy skills, especially as defined in kigh school curricula ic Hew York State, are mostly oasea on discriainating shape, form, and relative size, and arranging causal events ir, linear scquecces, Casparatively littl.2 is said abcut ccfor, texture, lighting, or emotional impact, or any of the other qualities that might distinguish the *'visual far~guagc*~from the written one, Sea Johc L.Debes, "The loo^ cf Visual LiteracyN ic

N, Y,, Pitraar: Pub1ishers, 1970, pp. 1-16. Ia ancther sense q3visual literacy" is associa.ted with the concept of flrt;adingH a photclgrapb as ainor white used it:

Readicy is an applicatiol: to photography of the li tera ry praceice of explication - a long-standing method which was greatly elaborated at the beginning of the this century through the emphasis which certain critics, suck as I.B.Wichards, gilliaat Empson, T,S. Eliot, ard the group known as the Mew Critics, placed on a thorough analysis of the macnes in which a piece of literature i*wcrksfl, how its subject, devrfopaent, rhyae, ttc. interrelate, This elaboration of the use of methodical analysis, ironically, seems actually to have stiraulated extravagant a~dirrelevant P~terpretationsof art works at the hands of insensitive critics. But when explication has been employed witk intelligence it has been singularly successful ir, dealirlg with the special Eatare of each art work, As with reading, Dcuever, there has been a hesitancy on the part of some explicatcrs to regard value judgement as part of their job. \ f*reauinge implies the performacce of a value-free "jobf*.

283 Clement Greenberq. quoted -in Mathan Lyons, editcr, Photoqraphy --ic ---the ------Tu~rtietB ------Century, N,Y,, Aorizon Press and the George Eastman House, 1967, p.vii,

Balker Evans in Louis Kronenberger, editor, Quality: Its

@pqg thf Ayts, N.Y,, Athensua, 1969, p,170.

remarks of another LIFE editor:

Photographic books don't g~fagto the potential buyer to represent the values which buyers must ~dentify in order to purchass. So, gcu have to overcome the appearance of limited vafues, .,To the possible buyer, the subject of the book should meet a need, as a reference book, A book must alsc have values beycnd those which the person gets as he riffles through it, --The --aver* purchaser feels &hqg vgrPs represent ------substantial ------values. W~*veboec conditicned to this, The photographic book can be so easily cansu~edthat you have to have more than ac attractiva photcgraphic , presentation,

Norman Ross, in Photoqraphic Conmunica&~g, p, 145 (italics added) ,

lea Foucault p, 116.

la9 Arthur D.Lavejoy, ggfxckxi~gg Hman Nature, Baltimore,

Thg Johns Bopkins Press, 1961, Lectures If and IV, o_~.cft, 190 Katherine George, "The Civilized Vest Looks At Primitive

Africa: 140-180. A Studp in Ethnocentrism8*, io The Conceut of

-,,the ,,,,-,,~,~Primitive edited by Ashely Hcntagu, M.Y., The Free Press, 1968, pp.475- 193,

392 Sawel J~hnson, &asselas, Chapter 10, quotea fro& Beardslay,

1g4 Carl Sandbrug, wPrelcrgueig to _T& Faajly of gal, N,Y,, Huseua cf Modern Art, 1955. See Roland Barthes, PIytholoqjis, G.R.,

Graaada, 1972, pp.10- 102. The same assumptions shaping The Family --cE ---Man are used in describing photography as a visual language:

The language of the photographer is truly a wiversal language in the world. It is unercuabered, One need riot be horn in a particular country to speak it, nor nust one attend a school to read it at a basic level. It is the language most readily understandabla to all and cur atost iraportant fora of corttmunication among nations acd culures,

Barvin Koner, "The Photographeras Changing VisionM ic Photographic

Com~uriicaX;io~,pp. 5!1960-. Note that no part of Koner" statement has ady support from anthropological or historical research.

195 PXEBE-LIFE has, like Didorfit, gone heavily into the eccycfopedia busicess, acd covers subjects such as art, history, travel, cooking and photography - all an indicatfcn of LIFE'S inv~lvementin the infcrmatioc industry.

201 Alexa~derGerard, Essay on Taste, yuoZea in Edntund Burke,

E&Thse~hii[=algni~uim Into g4g Oriuin of gg lueas of t&g Subi&!g ---acd ------Beautiful, edited by J,T, Boulton, M. Y., columbia University Press, 1958, p,xxxi v. She economic power of critics see Dallas U.Smythe, 48Realisas

Culturale G Defense Culturaliw, t_g S~e-ttaco&, volume 22, pp, 1-18,

209 See Bcaunont Newhall" chapter on *t~traiyhti?hotographyW in --The ---History cf Photoqra&y, N,Y,, Musueua of acdern Art, 1964, pp .Ill-131,; and Helmut Gernsheim, Cgggt&vg Photqraph~, pp.172-188ff,

D,Hfisrgan, editor, g?f EEcyc10~edia ~f Photoqra~he,N.Y., Greystone

Press, 1963, Volume IX.

211 Andy Grundberg, '@Elust Scenics Be C~lorful?~~,Kodern Modern Art, 7973, p,iili.

2 13 Jacques Ef lul, ~echriiqpg, translated by Robert K. Herton,

N.Y., Alfred A,K~opf, 7965, p,xxv,

14 Herbert narcuse, Eras 2nd Civifizat~og,N.Y,, Yfntage Books,

The heart of the deist position may be expressed nrost simply in terns of five cafdinal propositions: (a) A12 men possess the faculty of reason adequate to all the ireportant needs of human life. (b) Reason, the image of God in mar,, can knou God and God's will, (c) gangs duty is lo bs God's will = ntan*s duty is to seek the happioess of all men. (d) flan has always had this possibility of knowledge of the good, or natural religicc. (o) No religior, can be higher than natural re figion,

E, Graham Raring, intraducticr to Desh gig Natural miiqhon, NsY*, Frederick Ungar, 1967,p, x,

Bcr it became who created thea (the animals) to set them ic crd~s. And if he did so, it's unphilosophical to se~kfor azy other Origin of the Oorld, or to pretend that it might arise out ok a Chacs by the mere laws of Natnre; though being once forstd, it azy coctinue by those la%s fcr &any Ayes. For while Comets mve in very excertrick Orbs in all mariner of Positions, blicd fate could never aake all the placets move oce and the same way ic Orbs concentrick scme inconsiderable Irr~gulariaiesexcepted, whicb may have axisen from the tritntual. Actiens of Comexs and Pfa~etsupor, onc: anether, and wirick rill be apt to increase, till. this System wants a Hefcrmaticn, Such a wonderful Uniforinity in the Planetary System must he allowed the Effect of Choice. Sir Isaac Newtoc,

The wish tc capture evarlescent reflections is ~ot ocly Z@possibl~,as has beerL shcvn by thorough German investigation, but the inere desire alone, the will to do so, is biaspfienty, God created mari in His ow. image, acd no man-@ads machine may fix the iffiagz of God, Is it possible that God should have abandoned His eterraf priccipfes, 2nd allowed a Frenchman in Paris to give to the world an invention of the Devil?

Photographyw, Agertu3:~15, Number 1, Spring 1970,

219 YOUSUE Karsh, Search of Great~ss,University of Toronto

Press, 1969, pp.7-9. See ths passages aecoapanying the portraits

of Hariar Anderson, &arc Chaga31, Alkrt Sinsitkin, Hartin Luther King, etc.

220 Ansel Adams, *+TheArtist and the Ideals of Wilderness", in ------Wilderness.: &negnecaqs Eivirnq kiexitaqg, edited by David Brower, San Fracciscs, Sierra Club, 1961, pp.09-59.

22% Esnst Haas, The Creatiog, N,H., The Viking Prsss, 197 1, pp.7-9. 1

222 PaZph Hattersley in Octave og Prqygi?, N.Y., Aparture, Volua?

17, Nurnber 1, 1972, p.97.

224 See J.B.Bury, The Idea of Promess, N.Y., Dover, 1932, pp.144ff.

229 See Garry Bills, Nixon &raaiste~: 3%g crisis ef Zbg SF.lf-Hade

&in, Boston, Houghton Mifflic, 1970, especially p.539fZ.

Art is politically suspect - 1 mean, from the liberal point of view - not only because it evokes arid plays upor, ir;ocds of sensuality and passivity; not only because every creation involves a descent, at feast temporary, into superstitions, fixeu ideas, perverse fantasies, self-hypassis, and other outlived areas of the psyche; ~otonly because, ~iomatter what advances are scored by science, technology, and social orgacization, art ~uststill be fabricated by hand by a single individual ix a maricer rto more efficient thar, in the temple of Pharoh or a medicine raac's hut, Art is abov@ all suspect because its inherited reactionary ?x~derrcies, it constantly ams i&selF anew agairAst the rorid of fact; since for there to be a work of act, some degree of reality must have been conceeded tc Porm. IL short, the te~ptationof art to betrayal of the social consci*nce is irremediable,

Harcf d Rcsecberg, Drscover&q j&g greg~g&,The Uoivarsity of

Chicago Press, 1973, p.6.

233 Cornell Capa, editor, Csccern5g Photpq~~&g2, M,Y.,

Gr ossrnan Publishers, 1972, flIntroductio~fl. Chapter IY: Image and Essecce

244 Karl Barx, Capital, translated by Samuel Boore and Edward

Aveli~g,N. Ye, Bodern Library, 1906, p. 83.

249 EI+Brig~Ioglou, A his tor^ gf Hman l?&?yp, London, Boqasth Press, 1976, pp, 138 - 15Q; Carl Kohler, & his tor^ ~f Costu&g, N, Y ., 'Dcver Publications, 1963, pp. 332-373: Blaslche Payne,His+ory of Costume, B. Ye, Harper an& Bow, 1955, pp.325-450. s* hobert Taf t, BotoaraP?y pQ Am~rlcpp%eggs N, Y, , Macmillan,

1938, reissued ~y Dover Pub., 7954, p, 138,

92Tha Wg&g sf Oliver Wendell AO~ES,Standard Edition, Boston, Noughton, Miff f ix and Company, 1962, p, 297. rr

67 Steven Halpern, nSouvenirs of Experience: The Victcfian Studio

Pcrtrait and the Twentieth-Century Snapsho'tH, ir, Jonathan Green,

Company, Rcchester, N.Y., 1961, p.2, i ' Bibliography Abrams, M.H., The Mirrpr qpd %&g &gw, N, Y., Oxford University Press, 1952,

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