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Myths, Persons & C

Fragment, intention, of the photographic image

Toute photo est cette image rebelle et blouissante Qui permet

dinterroger la fois lailleurs et lici, le pass et le prsent, ltre
et le devenir, la fixit et le flux, le continu et le discontinu, lobet
et le sujet, la forme et le matriau, le signe et...limage.
Franois Soulages, Esthtique photographique, Paris, Nathan,
1998

Considering the myths of the photographer, I would like to plunge into the mythical
images of photography, considered as fragments which call our attention for a specific concept:
- of being
- of personal subjects
- of nature
- of emptiness of representation, whatever they tell us about as an image.
I believe photographic images are fragments from the visual totality (whatever that is...)
that exists to be seen; and photographic images are fragmented from each other as
partial/various (points of) views from the visual totality.

Toute photo est donc cette trace nigmatique qui fait problme,
qui fascine et qui inquite. Dun ct, on veut croire que grce
elle lobjet, le sujet, lacte, le pass, linstant, etc., vont tre
retrouvs; de lautre, on doit savoir quelle ne les redonne
jamais: au contraire, elle est lpreuve de leur perte et de leur
mystre; au mieux, elles les mtamorphose.
Franois Soulages, Esthtique photographique, Paris, Nathan,
1998

We understand that the different images, which we see and nominate as pictures, are
taken, are received by us in their visual condition, through the thoroughness of content. Their
inner essences, which emerge from the images we really see in the real world, are some sort
of witness of the visual field and its reality.
1. The fragmented images in photography belong to different species; they testimony
different themes and they recall different photographed items (issues).
All these different kinds and pluralities are supposed, they are chosen by us as
conceivers, creators, in a previous state of achievement: the small portion of reality
chosen to be an unique image, either when considering a landscape, an object or a
portrait... ; even when we consider the ultimate tricks of technical events, that calls a
plastical interference, by instance...
And there is a time when the photographer supposes, when he thinks, when he
considers, before he chooses the partial view, he will develop from the wholeness of the
(total) possible vision. There is another time when the photographer applies the most
desired treatment he will adequate to the photographical material he will be able to
intentionalise in this second moment, after the impression. (And for us, it is difficult to
judge about the choice he made...)
2. We must deeply consider the intentional character, which precedes the mechanical
realisation of the photographer, the aesthetic character of the praxis of his artistic
mtier, and then the second and final intention of the production as a work of art.
- The photographer as an artist creates an image which has already an existence
in itself: the image of an object of our acquaintance, which exists, somewhere
around us (inside or outside ourselves), that began from the category of the new
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or imaginary motives. The author's creativity or objectivity, depending on his
aesthetic point of view, and his theoretical principles determines whatever
might be the achieved image.
- The photographer chooses this image, cuts it, and fragments it, with the
intention, with the will to achieve the authenticity of an image as a piece/work.
The object (the image of the object even it is an object/concept) becomes an
esthetical object because the photographer is able and wants - to achieve a
new kind of reality.
3. The fragmentarily iconography of the image allows us to know and/or to recognise,
or even to imagine other real spaces, uniques and placed. The fragmentarily allows
the exclusion of the huge unnominated, of the infinity; supposes the fragment
which we recall as a unique and artistic fragment, referred to the single elements
which are incorporated in the image as a whole in case of the figurative image
tendency, but also in the case of all others possibilities of technical and
iconographic means, about the abstract and imaginative photography. Either we use
a specific view, the point blank, or the immediate data.
4. When we read these unique images, we are facing towards the fragmentarily of real,
towards the chosen visual field, either it is a representative image or an
abstract/imaginary image.
- By representative image I mean the representation which recognises the
liable, the imediaticity of real/known, the existing real images or even
mental/cognitive/conceptual images that receive its materiality in the print,
proceeding from the work on technical bases. Its different from what we might
call the visible.
- By abstract image I mean the absence of any representative object of any
relation to a semantic domain, known as a conceptual being or a material being
given to our intellect, and also an abstraction transporting a meaning, meanings
in a symbolical, metaphorical field...
When the author considers the point blank, the visual-photographical frame, by
mean of his visual perception - the image of the photographed object, the image of
the image, using Michael Zeraffa concept in Le statut esthtique de limage he
perceptionate/perceive his (and ours) own visual field. The authors own visual field
is limited, conditioned, can be reduced by the author, to his aesthetic/visual aim,
adjusted by the technical display and the photographical adjustment. It happens at
the very moment the picture is taken. It is a desired fragmentarily, available by
his intention, technically possible the zoom is a kind of magical thing because
the photographic display may augment the visual field and allows other approaches
to the visible, even reveals the invisible quoting the idea on painting by Paul
Klee...
5. I wonder which are the criterias that define and determine the visual frames or the
fragments of landscape considered as objects on their own (inside/outside) that
have been chosen by the artist... These criterias are in direct proportion, they
proceed from the originary images, that is the (deep and) mythical images of the
artist. The constitution of these images results from subjective experiences. They
integrate existential and imaginary portions of the visual (and invisible) world
available for the artist. These images gain the ultimate dimension of the
unconscious. These images take symbolical references both from the personal and
the collective imaginary domain; these images emerge from the inner and external
mythologies of the artist self.
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Are this criterias really identical to those of the naturalist and romantic
tradition in visual arts, those which shaped the visual nature of the paintings
products for good?
Or, do these criteria belong to the surreal world, where the symbols of the
non-chosen, the random phenomenon, produce a kind of images, whose
representative (and oniric) contents are archetypal?
Or, is it an intentionally founded in the inner aims of the very own pictorial
composition? (composition considered as a plastic and aesthetic object...)
It might happen, depending on the intentional, as the prime component
attending to the final artistic desire of the photographer, and conceiving the
work/picture. It will relate the pictorial sense with the profoundest directions of the
main creative perspectives. If so, the pictorial/technical and aesthetic thing seizes
the aim of the communication, of the meaning recognition, interpretation,
representation, evocation of something. An necessary condition to attempt the
boom of the artistic/aesthetic product, is given by the authenticity assumed in the act
of choosing the true substance of the composition as a final goal (both inside and
outside the artists self...)
6. The intentional as an aesthetic category will achieve and will exist as the hinder
material substance, as a work of art, because it will be, finally, the later result as a
photographic image, accorded, adapted to the ultimate nomination, available by the
action (decided) of the artist as an agent, as a generator of acts and works.
So, the intention that precedes the final production results from different subjective
elements of the author, as I already said; it comes from the creative conscious and the
creative unconscious, which aims the existence of a new real.
In the artistic procedures the pictorial/visual options, but also the intellectual ones,
travel forward as inner images the most dangerous and movable ones from the
memory, responding to the present or to the future movement inside and out. The
contents of these mental images (coming from an vivid existence or not), agree (or not)
with the final result of the obtained image/vision. They are related to multiple
significations in a frame, build on the most fundamental references, evoking the main
essence of personal/collective mythologies in the Jungian sense of the archetypes -, in
order of the desired exteriorisation given in the photographic work. (See from Carl G.
Jung, LHomme e ses Symboles)
7. The photographer places himself firmly as he assumes the conscience of his
appurtenance to a specific time and space, to the plastic and aesthetic irrefutable
conditions, for the definition of the typology of his artistic circumstances (which
consignee his visual language). His visual language configures in substance and
extent - the shape of the photographic image he wants to accomplish. In order of
this precise subject and history, he will choose the visual and meanful qualities to
realise it truly; according to the aesthetic themes or anthropological propositions of
the picture, by instance. Its different if it concerns an outside picture or an inside
one, a studio achievement as final piece... it limits the identity of the photographic
image, the main lines the authors allows us to see it, to understand and
interpretative it, or simply to receive and feel it. It corresponds to certain forms of
aesthetic performance and techniques, which come and face the productions itself
with different aims, functions, more or less accepted and understood.
8. The aesthetic categories and plastic qualities of all kinds of photographs correspond
to models and idealisations related to the personal will of giving existence to the
mythical aims of the author as an individual person. These aims have symbolic
contents understandable when we consult the sort of iconographic display about it:
our personal symbolic is connected to the institutionalised one, belonging to a given
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mythology that contains the signs of the definite time and space. The author will
apprehend the necessary elements that will accomplish the final image,
corresponding to the real conditions (psychological and physical) found around him.
9. The distance given between the photograph and the object as a picture to be -
(strategies and proceedings included) enables an approach or a distance
considering the point blank. The object to be taken has in itself a volume and
occupies a space of its own. Again, the distance given between the author and other
persons involved in the fragment of this compositional scenario, contained in the
dispersed points of the surface (total visual space in the real and lived frame of the
author), detaches itself from the background, and shows a random organised
landscape. The artists inner need for a background of this nature, seduces us and
leads us towards the scenario of the image, according to a known gestalt, and fulfils
the configured selves (material or person), one by one, and their components as a
whole. By instance: a stone wall, with the defining textures, becomes an abstract
and ununderstandable thing so, it becomes a new stuff.
10. These very same imagistic qualities become the authors shown symbols; his
subjective visual vocabulary becomes richer. The symbols succeed themselves, as
enchained images around a very same motif; they move towards the revelation of
the ultimate meaning; they constitute a deep step on the photographer
comprehension as an artist and an aesthete.
We recognise it through the knowledge of the recondite conditions of the author,
connected with our own desires and fears the most phantasmatiques ones... as
individuals, which look at someones other image. Then, our inner environment
expresses itself in external creations: stones, branches of a tree, a piece of marble,
an incomplete shade, the courant water, any visual references of persons...finally,
structures of any kind.
These and many other elements might be near (inside images), far (external frames),
and even never have existed in a material way, it doesnt matter, because they take
an absorption of their own space as objects towards the very own space of the
author. (Considering the proximity or distance of the objects these elements
turned symbolic regard their own condition and the one of the person that
manipulates them in visual terms and turn them into works of art... These
fictional proximity or distance directs the pictorial nature of what will become the
photograph. It depends also on the technical terms, the camera as an intermediate,
the just time to configure the print nocturne pictures, by instance...- according to
the open space conditions).
11. The sense of spatiality shown by the author is very important: it means the dismount
of the photographic process taken as an individual decision. Considered wetter
framed in an open or closed space, it is available to multiple choices and
possessions: regarding a point of view wider or closest, from which he approaches
himself or keeps him apart, as for his own wish.
The photographer finds various chances to accomplish his selection at an open
space seen trough the camera in a 360 angle surrounding him. He can turn around
himself, performing a circular movement, attaching himself in the earthly frame and
achieving, by his picture, the right angle he chooses.
The fragment of the visual environment he selects is a consequence, not just from
the moment and the duration, but also from his psychomotor experience. Either the
author considers an urban landscape or pure nature; no bounds or architectonic
barriers will restrict what he wants to be seen.
In his studio, the artist appeals to the performing idea of the individual person
trapped in a closed space, where his attention is focussed, is reduced in some sort, to
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the human as a still-object (//still-life); the artist localises the persons at a single
place, moving around or standing still, seduced by the most desirable chains of
lights (in an chromatic sense also) or willing to reveal the inner condition of being.
12. The stillness of the photographic picture must allow the development of the process
towards possible and various understandable achievements recurring to the right
techniques and methods: superposition of images, use of different types of filters,
collages, etc. in order to ultimate the author aesthetic decision. That, is the condition
of an picture that becomes a photographic image: a selected fragment turning into
an artistic substance. That kind of image will improve an aesthetic experience in the
spectator, and might define it as an aesthetic object, following Mikel Dufrennes
point of view.

Lobjet peru a un statut ambigu: il est cet objet que je perois

parce quil mest prsent, mais en mme temps il est autre
chose: il est cette ralit trangre que la percpetion npuise
pas.
Mikel Dufrenne, Phnomnologie de lexperience esthtique,
Paris, PUF, 1979, vol I, p. 285

13. At this moment I could if there was still time and opportunity for it attend, for
instance, to what occurs in the field of the point blank mobility, as a aesthetic target:
we can consider the personal figures as performers of different movements or
stillness, the still-life and natural beings, and even some kind of conceptual
structures, from which signs are absent. Attending to the very own nature of the
object selected by the author aim, he permits himself to be penetrated by the
entity/identity of the object.
14. Its not also the right moment to talk profoundly about the photojournalism
pictures, the sort of documentaries where the image gains, towards people, an
historical and document precision, which transcends the plain aesthetic interest of
the photographic status of the image, capturing the development of factual
movement, event, action, as an objective document of something that really
happened or that just exists!
15. I wont approach photography as a hobby or as a familial testimony of the greatest
events! But in other hand, I wont escape from the making a few remarks on the
importance of the affective dimension or the personal and emotional involvement of
the author as a person, regarding his fellowships and his own work even as an
idea/ideal one. We attend mainly to the symbolic charge which is the main result
(and mobile) of the irrational and deepest feelings and subjective experiences as a
person and an author. Symbols, as visual elements of the myths travel thorough the
psychic universe of the artist, show the emergent single nature crossed with the
collective ones, permitting an explaining in the domain of emotion and sensibility.
The artists self interacts with other persons, configuring the knowledge we get
from collective myths. It is more difficult when it matters the personal myths which
are built from inside and for which we dont possess any key!
16. In what concerns the picture of someone as a model/object of the conceptual work
to be, the right place at the place where time is fixed during the authors technical
display, we can found an association or a dissociation from the mythical
iconography of the background, appropriated in the symbolic frame constituted by
the different elements of the single image in itself. Finally, we plunge into the
pictorial an mythical achievement as an aesthetic reality. The capture of fragments
of real, the conceptual localisation (also), the desire for immortality, which
transcends the time/sensation and the perception of retinal image (not the mental
image or the onirique image) answer to the previous desire of communicating and
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emphasising the personal selection from what we saw and what was analysed by
the one and the others.
17. Its final to underline, that we can try and that we can understand the true meaning
of the considered object, its structure or the inner chain of the photographer visual
aims, translated into his symbolic and mythical expressions, which denunciates his
real personality.
We must remark that the symbolic incorporates the most essential function there is,
for the sake of the given objects images as artistic product in the photographic
event. Beyond the object as an usual object and the object as an image/content in
the level of photographic work, we must consider the object as the manifestation of
an individual subject expressed in it. These very subjective expressions carry their
symbolic hard quality in a sociological sense as well as a grant for their
photographic image identity to be. This mythical identity, both in the author and his
work, have been fulfilled with the anthropological and philosophical forces, with
the right conditions for their best existential metamorphosis as analogue human
beings expecting to become aesthetics identities. The subject/object has a previous
kind of reality before the photographic imagery, which grants the overcoming of the
precarious instant. His real time is the mythical time, circular time and
psychological time also...
18. The image perceived from the personal status as a kind of performing act applicable
to the picture, in a scenario (the image of the image of a subject), does not respond
immediately as a work of art to a single appropriation of its existence, by having a
symbolic meaning, developed in the self-image, and later defined as an artistic
being. Undoubtedly, persons are symbols in their own condition, not only when
they assume their iconographic substance as image. The choice of a certain attitude,
of a certain visual touch, performed as corresponding directly to an aesthetic
intention, belongs both to the conceptual and symbolic desires of the author. The
image as a conceived thing; it is freed from further conditions which wont be
applied to the case; we notice a kind of aesthetic reduction, performed by the
intention as a product. Namely, the image gains a more solid substance when it
becomes an aesthetic thing, reason for its true reason and dimension, founded in a
determinate concept of individual person.
19. The image as a fragment gets its final symbolic and aesthetic condition when
someone is in front of it, when someone is able to receive it as their own image to
be. As any other person, the photographer (as any other author), develops a certain
attitude, a certain capacity of which is better for his demands. He plunges in certain
boundaries; the object is an inner object and also an independent being as the image
gets its own materiality with or without support for real. There is time for the
conception, there is a time for the initiation, and there is a time for the installation as
an image, till the very image is final and achieved as an aesthetic entity. These
three notions of time involve the feeling and intention of the living space. We can
consider the space as a territory located on earth symbolic mean of the human; we
can consider space in an air view, in an air perspective, symbolic mean of the
sacred.
20. The air perspective, by instance, seduces the image as a hole and means a double
condition of the human Greek Myth of Icare. Being able to fly means the chance
of seeing everything that there is on earth: and finally, to have it all, to possess the
absolute being. It is related, as quantitative opposite, to the Gullivers Lilliput Myth
everything small but one the One. He also sees from the top things under...Both
are human ambitions over plain human qualities of real perception and ownership.
The picture taken from the air accomplishes these myths. This desire for a
panoramic view is very well illustrated in Wim Wenderss Wings of desire the
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ultimate and intentional lost of sacred, in order to become human the inverse, we
might say...The image is always something very personal, we change inside
ourselves images in account of our needs in an ontological meaning - as we are
able to ambition it. As any other product of visual art, the identity of the
photographic image its the very own iconography of the person made by and for
the content of human idealisations or concepts. The image is reduced to the very
essence of its aesthetic need or condition to develop as such a being both in the
anthropologic and ontological domains.
21. Person:
- artist/photographer/author as a singular identity;
- subjective intention and fragment to be taken as image;
- subjective understanding of the image as a reflection of the self;
- outside and material conditions of personal intention;
- inside and conceptual circumstances of personal expression;
- inner forces of mythical nature;
- outer energy of the fragmentarily image achieved.

Terminological Convention:
Photography procedure, technique, Art, etc. photographic;
Photo a photography in its materiality, that is, the ,material image obtained by a photographic
procedure;
Photographic Act the brief moment that lasts the prise de vue;
Photographic Action the fact of conceiving, of making and of communicating a photography;
Metaphotography everything which concerns (says and do) the photography, at the time of the
conception, realisation, communication and reception.
Photographic material the display, the picture, the paper, etc.

>>>
- Which is the relationship between photography and reality?
- Can photography capture reality?
- What is taken in the objet taken in the photo, in the objet to be photographed?

- In the nineteen century: Arago and Baudelaire Le public moderne et la

photographie, Salon de 1859, in Oeuvres Compltes, Paris, Gallimard, La
Pliade, 1971;
- Nowadays: semiological approach photography as vestige Rosalind Krauss;
that has been Roland Barthes;

Different types of photography:

1. Photojournalism: most of these photographs have been manipulated in order of
political, ideological, commercial or financial;
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2. Domestic photography: almost every photo of these type is a performance; is
theatrical;
3. Erotic or pornographic photography: the photographed body can always simulate
desire;
4. Publicity photography: it exists to create an illusion;
5. Certain theories on photography Barthes: it seems mythological;

- The problem of the objet to be photographed 1st. theory and aesthetic obstacle

Prof Doutora Maria de Ftima Lambert

Superior School of Education/Polytechnic Institute of Porto
Faculty of Philosophy (Braga) U.C.P.