Phenomenology of Photography - a photo on Flickriver

“Everyone knows the usefulness of what is useful, but few know the usefulness of what is useless.”
- Zhuang Zi (Chinese philosopher, died 286 BCE).

Did you know that everything we see is the product of reflected light? We don’t actually see the things-in-themselves, just their reflected light. In my recent series of infrared photographs I hope I made this point visible and clear. We cannot see infrared with the naked eye (in fact the visible light spectrum is just a tiny fraction of the entire electromagnetic spectrum in our universe). So just because we can’t see something with the naked eye, does not mean it is not real. Seeing infrared photographs however, enlightens us to this reality beyond our limited sense of Being. Radio waves is another example. Sure we can’t see them, but if we have an instrument to detect them and “tune in”, we can listen to wonderful music. The ancients would have seen this as pure magic. It is also analogous to spirituality.

In my posting yesterday, “Being Present in the World”, I opened that discussion with the concept of non-duality. We find the world and ourselves most real when we lose ourselves in the present moment and sense what it is to experience Being. The technical term for this philosophical approach is Phenomenology:
“...phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what (Edmund) Husserl called ‘intentionality”, that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is a consciousness of or about something.” plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

Long books of arcane philosophy have been written on these questions of the meaning of existence and how we understand our place in the world. Is it really possible to know anything about the world apart from our senses? Can we even trust our senses as a guide to what is true? Surely the world really exists “out-there”? Are there worlds we cannot see? But what phenomenology tells us is that it is pointless to look for a completely objectified ready-made world “out-there”, what we must do is understand that our consciousness of the world is what makes the world “real” to us. In perhaps the most influential phenomenological book of all time, “Phenomenology of Perception” (1945), the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, grounds our understanding of the world in our body. Through our body and senses we participate in the world, and what we learn through this gives us insight into the reality of Being.

So how does all this relate to photography? Or is it in fact just “useless” knowledge?

Let me put this question several different ways. Why do we love taking photographs? What are we trying to achieve? Is it to impress others with our life experiences (as in our latest holiday snaps in Majorca)? Is it to create our own subjective and artistic view of the world? Is it to share the beauty of Nature? Is it to awaken consciences over social issues? Is it a way of impressing ourselves upon the world through taking selfies and sharing them on social media (both go together by the way)? Are we just collectors of image-experiences? Is photography a form of therapy? The list is really endless if we are looking for individual justifications of why we photograph.

But what if we begin by examining our own photographs to see if there are some clues there about our “intentions” (Husserl’s word) when we go out with a camera in hand? Because you can be sure that the kind of photographs we produce will shape our understanding of the world and vice versa. The very fact we talk about “composing a photograph” is a sure sign that we are not merely reproducing an external world. The clearest example of this that I have ever consciously produced is my slide show called “Suburban Dreams 65 Photographs”. www.flickr.com/photos/luminosity7/52275162056/in/dateposted/

But the photograph I’ve chosen to discuss here is of the Low Head Lighthouse at dusk. In fact it is one of the first photographs I took when I bought my Nikon D850. I had decided to make a return to photography after many years, having previously used film cameras. Perhaps these questions might give you some examples of how you can interrogate your own approach to taking photographs. It is also important that these questions are framed in the first person. “I” see it this way, “others” may not. These questions are in fact more important than the specific answers.

* Why did I frame this picture in a portrait or vertical orientation?
* What was the significance of this time of day for me?
* Why did I choose a lighthouse?
* Why did I wait until the light was on to make the photograph?
* What made me decide for colour and not black and white?
* Why did I take the photograph from a beach?
* What was so appealing about the sky that made me give it so much room in my frame?
* Why did I choose to emphasize the various layers in the photograph from the sand, rocks and grass in the foreground to the various layers of light and cloud above the lighthouse?
* What sort of mood am I creating?

We could go on, but the more questions like this we ask of ourselves, the better we will come to understand the role photography plays in helping us to see the world the way we do.

“The Art of Making Photos: Some Phenomenological Reflections”
www.alexandria.unisg.ch/228184/1/Eberle_Thomas_2014a_The_...

Taken in: Australia / Tasmania / Low Head (show map)

Taken on: August 31, 2019

Tags:

Luminosity7

Launceston

Australia

Nikon D850

Phenomenology of Photography

Philosophy

John's Photo Philosophy

Landscape

Colour

Low Head Lighthouse

Sunset

Sunset light

Beach

Sky

Clouds

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Camera: Nikon D850, f/8.0, 1/10 sec, 120mm, ISO 64 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D850
Aperture:	f/8.0
Exposure Time:	0.1 sec (1/10)
Focal Length:	120mm
ISO:	64
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Capture One 22 Windows
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