Critical Paper Responses

Vilem Flusser: "Towards a Philosophy of Photography" 

Images are two-dimensional areas in which they reduce time and space into a simplistic form. Our eyes are then able to intake the information of the image by scanning over the surface. However, we are able to interpret these images in multiple meanings.
It is at this point that the images can become screens for humans to project themselves into. At the same time, the images illustrate texts that are the written context of the image in order to comprehend both expressions of ideas and thoughts. These texts can take away the so called “magical” meanings and emotions much like the technical images.
            Technical images, such as photographs, can be illustrated with magic by the texts that are paired with them. These images don’t have a set story until the text is written to be paired with them. But these images can be repeated endlessly for memories in every aspect of life. [If it is the intention of writing to mediate between human beings and their images, it can also obscure images instead of representing them. We can’t decode our texts anymore, or reconstruct the signified images.]
            All of these images can now be depicted through the use of a camera. All of the possible meaning can be created through the camera alone. But to a point, the photographers (the operator) tries to discover other ways in which the real world has not been viewed through the one compressed flat view. This is a first in which the operator merges with the device; thus the need to call the unity functionaries. The photographer controls the camera even though they do not know what is going on inside of the camera by the design of the camera’s exterior. I don’t think that being able to control something without knowing the ins and outs of the object is fully possible. You will achieve low outcomes by doing so. And yet, by working and manipulating you learning the molding process in which you create and how the device is created.


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