The Ontology of the Photographic Image

Lets disengage Bazin's ontological frame of reference, as a figure of speech. While it consitutes the bulk of the ontological essays, what emerges in Bazin, as either impossible, poetic, or the central point, is the photographic image as a reality, or model, in itself.

But that said, what would then be left to distinguish Bazin's photographic image from any other image such as a painted one, for a painted image can be regarded as a reality in it's own right as well. We would need something else in order to make the distinction.

What we could propose is that whatever an image might be, irregardless of it's origin, that the image is distinguishable in terms of the very comprehensions, or beliefs we possess, of such. In other words a photographic image need only be any image that appears to posses that identity that Bazin (or ourselves) otherwise attribute a photographic image.

But how do we know if we are not mistaken? Well, having dropped any requirement for an image to be anything other than what it is in itself there is no longer an issue of it being mistaken for anything other than itself since an image-in-itself is so by definition. But insofar as we will comprehend distinctions between such images, and no doubt comprehend a category we call the photographic image, we can ask a related question: how do we know if an image we comprehend as a photographic one actually belongs to that category? The short answer is again: by definition. If we comprehend an image as photographic we have categorised it as such: we have put that image into that category and that category can be regarded as simply the set of all images we have put into it.

If we bring back Bazin's ontological frame of reference, we can bring it back, not as a definition of the photographic image, but as that belief system (or comprehension) which creates that category we've called the photographic image, but we can still feel reluctant to stand inside that definition. To do so we can feel as if we might submit to an illusion - that even if we agree with the ontological definition, or precisely because we do agree with such, that some images might slip through our filter, as photographic, when they are not.

Bazin's approach is to put the onus back on to the underwriters of the image. If they have fooled us into thinking something is photographic, when it isn't, then that is their questionable effort, not ours. But for those of us who prefer to remain outside the ontological definition (where it doesn't really matter whether the image is photographic or not) Bazin still has something to offer along these same lines. Where we have put an image into the category of photographic image, it is because to us it looks like what Bazin means by a photographic image (and that is a profoundly easy thing to accomplish), but we may find ourselves the subject of criticism by those who think they've fooled us.

"Hah." they might laugh.
"What?" you might respond.
"You think that image is a photographic image" they claim.
"Yes, because it is a photographic image" you argue.
"But it's not - see it's computer generated" they say triumphantly.
"Ah. Thankyou. That's good to know. I'll put that into the category of computer generated images then."

Carl