6. The Habit of Black and White
I have found, speaking at the least for myself, that it is good to have a habit of shooting, on occasion, in just black and white. I say this without prejudice towards digital. Black and white photography, whether in digital or in 35mm film, achieves the same thing with respect a certain way of seeing, which color, whether digital or film, eschews.
Color is a good thing, but it can be a distracting thing, and could lend itself towards the quest for mere aesthetic studium, rather than for meaningful punctum. Color is beautiful, whether one speaks of certain shades or of certain combinations. But black and white is more thoughtful. One puts the quest for saturated spectrums aside: in black and white such aspirations for nice colors is from the very start frustrated. Hence one has to look for something else: the subject, the story, the action, rather than the mere appearance, or phenomena. The intelligible subject matter is sought after, and abstracted, and the trivialities of the merely colorful left behind. Here there is more likelihood of capturing the meaningfully puncturing, the important subject, because: of being encouraged to see the punctum.
A Happy Child. Leica II with 5cm Elmar f/3.5on B/W Kodak film ISO400
It may be possible that shooting 35mm black and white film does a slightly better job at supporting such a way of seeing, since once again, film costs, and so presses for more deliberated evaluation. After all, even in black and white, there can be the temptation to capture merely nice lines or shapes, such as trees or branches or the panels of building walls. So one is denied not merely the attractively colorful; one has reservations even of the merely structurally beautiful, which when wasted on expensive film, is venial sin. I did have, recently, a rather expensive Kodak CN400 c-41 processing 36 exposure film loaded, which give me great results. But when shooting that roll, I was well aware of the self-imposed discipline to not shoot the merely “visually interesting”. With respect digital, the beautifully monochromatic can still be a temptation.
Although at the end of the day, when the digital camera is set to shoot in monochrome, my own experience is that one’s attention can still be quite discernibly deflected from the merely aesthetic, in the search for subjects that truly matter. The digital camera I’ve been using is the Fuji X100, which simulates the rangefinder photographic experience. So: for someone shooting in color for quite a while, the transition to black and white effects such a way of seeing powerfully, even if one still has the license to snap away. Hence even if not shooting in film, digital photographers who shoot in black and white would, I think, find the experience recognizably beneficial.
7. Death and Resurrection
[Having revisited] Martin Heidegger lately… I’ve come away with some ideas that I think are rather interesting to me [insofar as they inform my thoughts on photography and ethics].
As I’ve written in [earlier] chapters, photography inclines one in a variety of ways to enter into a kind of evaluative, and hence practical mode of thought, and that in turn emerges the focal viewpoint, just as our grasp of what truly matters becomes more keen. Now it’s occured to me that, basically, when one is confronted with a limitation, with the closing down of infinite possibilities, then one enters the focal viewpoint–precisely because one can no more squander opportunities, but must choose.
Now the horizon of death, which we all face, imposes precisely that kind of limitation to our lives; when we are exisiting with the knowledge that we will die one day, we begin to take more seriously the time we have, and begin to decide what to put into the time we still have, and to discard what deserves less of our time and attention. We begin also to think through what is important and what is not, what is choice-worthy and what is not, what is good and evil.
Thus the peering through the viewfinder in photography is analogous to one’s being-toward-death. In this recognition that we are dying, we begin really to live: to exist with a consciousness of what matters, and what does not. We become, or are readied to become ethical. In dying, we are resurrected: we are now more fully alive then when previously we were dead in our careless squandering.
In a sense also, there is here, in photography, just as there is in the being-towards-death, a kind of theory, or theoria as the Greeks meant it. That is to say, thea+horao, the looking of the god[dess] at us to disclose to us+our pious looking back. (Rojcewicz, 2006) It is not by our sheer will power that this ethical comportment is achieved; rather the dynamism is the other way around. It is experienced as given to us, disclosed to us, un-hidden to us. We did not develop it, or deduce it. We did not work it out. Rather, we looked (through the viewfinder) and that ethical comportment was given, and hence “looked back”. Just as someone looks towards the horizon of death, and then it was given back, saying: “you need to spend your existence meaningfully, on the important things, and therefore, live.”
Heidegger (1976) said that only a god could save us, and that is true. In the theoria of photography, we the dead may begin to live.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the World Congress of Semiotics on Global Semiotics, in October 2012 in Nanjing China. I am thankful to members of the audience for helpful comments and their support. I also am also thankful to my panel members, Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio, for their encourangement.
References:
Anderson, L (2006), “Analytic Autoethnography”, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Vol. 35 no. 4, 373-395
Aquinas, T (1954), On Truth (Vol II, Qns X-XX), McGlynn, J. (trans.), Indianapolis: Hackett.
Barthes, R., (1982), Camera Lucida, London: Vintage.
Chua, J (2012), The Inquisitor’s Manual: Photo-Semioethic Studies, Retrieved November 26, 2012, from http://www.inquisitorsmanula.com
Chua, J (2013a), “Significal Designs: Translating for Meanings that Truly Matter” in Semiotica, Vol 196, 353-364
Chua, J (2013b), “Designing the “camera”: photo-semio-ethical studies” in Writing, Voice, Undertaking, Petrilli, S (ed.), Toronto: Legas, 199-202.
Deely, J (1990), Basics of Semiotics, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Finnis, J (1980), Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Finnis, J (1998) “Natural Law and the Ethics of Discourse” American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol 43, 53-73
Freeman, M. (2006). Autobiographical understanding and narrative inquiry. In J. Clandinin
(Ed.), Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. 120-145
Harrison, B (2002), “Photographic Visions and Narrative Inquiry” Narrative Inquiry, 12 (1), 87-111
Heidegger, M (1976), “Only a God Can Save Us”, available at: http://www.ditext.com/heidegger/interview.html
Petrilli, S (2009), Signifying and Understanding: Reading the Works of Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer.
Raz, J (2013), “A Menu of Questions” in Keown J & George RP (ed.), Reason, Morality and Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 13-23
Rojcewicz, R (2006), The Gods and Technology: A Reading of Heidegger, New York: SUNY