ARTS AND FACTS. FICTION, NON-FICTION AND THE PHOTOGRAPHIC MEDIUM (EDITED VERSION - COPYRIGHT MATERIAL REMOVED) Paloma Atencia-Linares UCL Submitted for the degree of PhD in Philosophy September 2013 1 I, PALOMA ATENCIA-LINARES, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 6th September, 2013 Paloma Atencia-Linares 2 To the memory of Claudia, Consuelo and María. Three strong women. 3 ABSTRACT In this thesis, I deal with the rarely discussed issue of how the nature of a representational medium—in this case photography—affects or contributes to the classification of works as fiction or non-fiction, and I provide a novel view on the relation between photographs and documentary works. Part I focuses on issues concerning the nature of photographic representation, its special relation with the real and its purported fictional incompetence. Part II takes up issues concerning the nature of fiction and non-fiction with an emphasis on the category of non- fiction/documentary, and examines its application to photography. Firstly, I discuss the claim, put forward by Kendall Walton, according to which photographs, in virtue of being depictive, are or favour fiction. I deny that this is so, although I argue that Walton’s claim is frequently misunderstood. Then, I address the more intuitive claim that photographs favour non-fiction. I argue that, if this is so, it is not because photographs are fictionally incapable. Photographs, I claim, can depict ficta by photographic means. However, this is consistent with saying that photographs bear a special relation with the real: (1) photographs are typically natural ‘signals’; they are handicaps and indices (Green 2007, Maynard-Smith and Harper 2004)—and thereby typically factive; and (2) photographs are documental images, images that support an experience that preserves the particularity of the original scene. These features contribute to non-fiction/documentary. To see how, I discuss various views on the nature of documentary and I propose an alternative account based on Stacie Friend’s ‘Genre Theory’. Finally, I discuss the application of the categories of fiction and non- fiction to photography. I claim that although these are active genres in the medium, it is more accurate to speak about factual and non-factual photography, where the former is a more basic category. This, in turn, is a consequence of the nature of the medium itself. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 4! Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... 5! Table of Figures ......................................................................................................................... 7! Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. 10! INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 12! PART I ..................................................................................................................................... 22! CHAPTER 1. DEPICTION, IMAGINATION AND FICTION ...................................... 23! 1.!Overview ....................................................................................................................... 23! 2.!Pictures as fictions ....................................................................................................... 24! 3.!Imagination, fiction and pictures. Walton’s legacy. ............................................... 34! 4.!Imagining as the default mode in pictorial representations .................................. 37! 4.1.!Imagining-seeing in films ..................................................................................... 38! 4.2.!Pictorial experience and imagined existence ..................................................... 40! 5.!Imaginings fit for fiction ............................................................................................ 45! 5.1.!Fictive pictures and fictional reference .............................................................. 45! 5.2.!Recreative imagination and fiction ..................................................................... 50! 6.!Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 54! CHAPTER 2. NATURAL IMAGES AND FICTIONAL INCOMPETENCE ................ 56! 1.!Overview ....................................................................................................................... 56! 2.!Natural images ............................................................................................................. 58! 3.!The debate on the fictional incompetence of photography ................................... 62! 4.!Photographic means ................................................................................................... 65! 5.!Objections and replies ................................................................................................ 70! 6.!Natural meaning revisited. Epistemological implications. .................................... 78! 7.!Signals, indices and handicaps .................................................................................. 82! 8.!Scope of the view ......................................................................................................... 93! 9.!A stronger account? Hopkins on factivity, design and proper working .............. 95! 10. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 101! CHAPTER 3. DOCUMENTAL IMAGES ......................................................................... 102! 1.!Overview ..................................................................................................................... 102! 2.!Photographs as a recognisable perceptual category. (What do we mean by special Phenomenology?) .......................................................................................... 104! 5 3.!Transparency ............................................................................................................. 113! 4.!(Depictive) Traces ..................................................................................................... 118! 5.!Factive pictorial experience ...................................................................................... 125! 6.!Particularity ................................................................................................................ 128! 7.!Explaining particularity ............................................................................................ 134! 7.1! Perceptual experience and photographic experience ..................................... 138! 7.2! Photographic experience, transparency and episodic memory .................... 144! 8.!The documental images view and phenomenology. Summary and clarifications .. ................................................................................................................................ 148! 9.!The documental images view vs. alternative theories. ......................................... 151! 10.!Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 155! PART II .................................................................................................................................. 156! CHAPTER 4. DOCUMENTAL IMAGES AND DOCUMENTARY WORKS ............ 158! 1.!Overview ..................................................................................................................... 159! 2.!From documental to documentary ......................................................................... 159! 3.!What is a documentary work? ................................................................................. 166! 4.!Visible Traces: photography as a necessary condition for documentary .......... 168! 5.!Documentary without photography: Carroll’s Films of Presumptive Assertion 181! 6.!The Genre Theory: photography as a standard feature ....................................... 192! 7.!Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 207! CHAPTER 5. FICTION AND NON-FICTION IN PHOTOGRAPHY ....................... 209! 1.!Overview ..................................................................................................................... 209! 2.!Documentary. Criteria for classification ................................................................ 210! 3.!Documentary. Effects on appreciation ................................................................... 213! 4.!Scepticism about fictional photography ................................................................. 219! 5.!In defense of photographic fiction .......................................................................... 221! 6.!Factual and non-factual. Categories reconsidered ............................................... 227! 7.!The nature of photography and the shaping of a genre ....................................... 234! 8.!Conclusion ................................................................................................................