Mechanical reproduction

Some time in the 1980s The Guardian ran an April fool’s article on the ‘first’ photograph. Shown on the front page this was deemed to have been taken in the 1790s by a monk in Japan. - spoof.

The first authentic photograph is the fixing of a camera obscura image.
The means of fixing an image is all that distinguishes a photograph from a projected image.
Does the camera see what we see?

When we speak of a copy without an original we call it a ‘simulacrum’.
Roland Barthes meditated on the photograph for much of his professional life. His book Camera Lucida best shows this. There he reproduces a photograph of a condemned man and adds the remark ‘he is dead and going to die’. This too raises the question of temporality – we see that he is alive in the photograph but we know he is dead – there is a conflict between perception and memory.

The difference between photographs and paintings is more than a matter of their resemblance to things or even their resemblance to each other. Often a painting is said to be ‘photographic’ when it is realistic. Yet we know that photographs may not appear to be realistic.

• Conventional signs/ image - letters, punctuation, words etc.
• Iconic signs/ image - pictures
• Indexical signs - indicates something: Shadow indexical of man/ smoke indexical of fire/ footprints etc

Indexical is evidence of presence e.g photograph.

Photo is documenting truth - manipulating this brings it back to painting.

Simulacrum - a copy without an original