Reading Discussion

January 27, 2018

Villem Flusser

It's interesting to reflect on ourselves and others after reading all those philosophical analysis of photography. To really appreciate the most of a photograph, one needs to scan all over the surface, analyze each element, and combine all elements together again. However, with so many digital photographs 'bombarding' us everyday, we tend to just take some glances at the photos. It's been a long time since many of us really focus on and analyze a single photograph for more than half a minute.

What's more, the statement that "...one element gives meaning to all the others, and receives its own meaning from all the others in return" (page 2) corresponds to one theorem that none of us are free when making choices. (We all know the whole is greater than the sum of its parts so I’m not going talk about that.) We’d think we are free and have our own distinct opinions, but every choice we make is actually under the influence of others, the society, our culture, and the whole world. In other words, we are ‘destined’ to make the choices which we think has nothing to do with the external world. When imagining and interpreting the photographs we see, we of course will have opinions based on our cultural background and social class. No wonder artists like Carrie Mae Weems have been trying so hard to help us realize how ‘biased’ we are when interpreting the images.

One of the most frequent topic in ‘Toward A Philosophy of Photography’ is the relationship between the images and the man. Nowadays people are overexposed to the plentitude of digital photographs, so many people take lots of photos of themselves in order to find their places in this world. Too many selfies in Instagram or taking photos with oil paintings hang in museums… Those are different ways of self-identification. It’s hard to not be ‘narcissistic’ in this era.