Technical Images

Destillat: An image is an idea

The photographic medium has been changing at an unprecedented pace in the last decades. As Robert Shore mentioned in the book “ Post-Photography”, being at the right place at the right time, in the tradition of Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, is no longer the challenge, a picture is just a platform, the starting point (or end point) of a lengthy process, taking photography to places it has never been before.

We have to learn how to look at photographs as social and cultural representation of how we see and think “photographically”, through what we capture through lenses and what we see on the screens. An Image is an idea and in an infinite production-exhibition- documentation loop, we sought to ask the place of art in photography.

The rise of technical images signify a new relationship with visible.  Technical images generally aim to represent the world, but in fact they hide their real dimensions, which is none other than that of being an image. Digitalization creates the illusion that there is no longer any difference between original and copy, but we forget the face that there is no copy without an original.

Posted by HH, 20. Jan 2019
Bild Digitalisation Germany Iran Künstler_in Post-Photography Technical Images

Zitat: ‘ex-ist’

Images are mediations between the world and human beings. Human beings ‘ex-ist’, i.e. the world is not immediately accessible to them and therefore images are needed to make it comprehensible. However, as soon as this happens, images come between the world and human beings. They are supposed to be maps but they turn into screens: Instead of representing the world, they obscure it until human beings’ lives finally become a function of the images they create.

Vilem Flusser, towards a philosophy of photography, 1983

Posted by HH, 19. Jan 2019
Bild Brazil Medientheorie Technical Images Tschechien Vilém Flusser

Zitat: Black Box

It is true that with technical images another factor places itself between them and their significance, i.e. a camera and a human being operating it (for example, a photographer), but it does not look as if this ‘machine/operator’ complex would break the chain between image and significance. On the contrary: The significance appears to flow into the complex on the one side
(input) in order to flow out on the other side (output), during which the process – what is going on within the complex – remains concealed: a ‘black box’ in fact.

Vilem Flusser, towards a philosophy of photography, 1983

Posted by HH, 19. Jan 2019
Bild Brazil Philosophie Technical Images Tschechien Vilém Flusser