Mechancial Deproduction

The source of the problem, of so many photographs that look the same, goes back to the error in reading a photograph as if it were no different from a painting, or the output of a printing press for that matter. The error is in reading a photograph as if it were the result of a printing process, a reproduction process, where something is being reproduced, where there is believed to be an already existing image.

The printing press was originally built to aid in the reproduction of books, which, until then, had to be manually transcribed by hand. One of the main tasks of a medieval monk was to "print" books by hand. Now in this situation the object being printed (whether by hand or press) exists prior to it's reproduction. There were always variations that occured - the marginalia, the illuminations. But the primary content had as it's origin, an original. In the case of reproductions with a long history the original might have since turned to dust.

Photography remains, for the most part, interpreted as a copy of something, as a reproduction, as a print. Indeed one author situates photography as having it's origin in the printing press.

While I can fight this reading head on, here now, it is not necessarily possible to avoid that when reading a photograph. Even when it is most clear, in words, a counter-argument, it is easy to slip back into the habit of reading  a photograph as if it were no more than a mechanical reproduction of some pre-existant (if temporary) original. Even realists fall back into this way of reading. Perhaps realists most of all.

However the theory can take a different tangent from practice. It need not determine practice. It can act as a way of thinking in words around whatever practice one does pursue. Indeed practice, I believe, can be regarded as a way of thinking, through another channel, one that doesn't necessarily use words, or one that isn't necessarily even possible to be mediated through words. That doesn't mean words can't still operate, or rather, co-operate with such practice.

Now I've been suggesting, implying or almost saying that photography is not a reproduction (mechanical or otherwise) of anything. But that is not quite true. Photography can reproduce things, and is often used to do so. But the argument I've been developing is that reproduction is not it's fundamental attribute. It has this power, but it is not it's only power, nor is it photography's fundamental power.

A photograph is capable of speaking in a language that does not need the eternal (the ideal virtual), and is capable of arguing against that virtual and upsetting that virtual - deconstructing that virtual at it's basis. It is a language, perhaps, which involves a form of gambling in which the artist can place a bet, rather than necessarily operating the table. But the object of the exercise is not winning (or losing) but playing the game in such a way that it doesn't matter whether one wins or loses. Perhaps "gambling" is not the right word since such implies an investment in the outcome. However it's the random nature of gambling that is the interesting part, or rather, it's dialectical relationship to the owner of the table.

The printing press is a deterministic system in which there is an object and it's reproduction, where each can be regarded as a reflection of the other, irregardless of their chronological order. An original implies it's reproduction and vice versa. But at the heart of photography is not this deterministic system but an acausal one in which there is no fundamental cause/effect in operation. If photography has the power to reproduce, it is achieved by working around it's fundamental indeterminancy. It is the equations of quantum mechanics (more than 50 years after the invention of photography) that formalise (virtualise) both the indeterminacy and the ways around it. The ways around it were discovered informally, ie. in practice, and probably account for why photography has been historically read as "mechanical reproduction".

An example of the use of quantum theory, to get around photography's indeterminacy (while simultaneously exploiting it) is the hologram. A hologram is made using film which is not any different from ordinary film, other than being of a higher definition. Otherwise it reacts to light in exactly the same way as ordinary film. But by using laser light, arranged in a certain way (according to quantum theory), a three dimensional image can be created.

Now the ways around the indeterminacy of photography is the way of casino operators. An alternative approach is not that of the gambler as such, but in what is possible in the dialectical space between the gambler and the casino operator.