The Thing Itself (Reading Response 2)

“The thing itself,” as described by Emerling, can be defined as the relationship between the photographic image and its supposed referent. This chapter explores the relationship between photography as a discourse and “the thing itself” by outlining a brief history of the function of photography as art. Photography began as a form a naturalism, a mimetic representation. According to Baudelaire, photography was not art, but something more archival. Art only existing as that which was creative and imaginary—not that which was a copy of the natural world. Modernism introduced the ideas of formalism and medium-specificity. Here lays good old Greenberg, “thingness,” and “narrative poverty.” Here lays “the thing itself.” This is the idea that a photograph exists purely as an index of a thing, a result of a process, a capturing of the world that exists autonomously. Postmodernism challenges this idea. Theorists like Bolton, Lyotard, and Benjamin emphasize the political, historical, and cultural contexts that a photograph inherently holds. The chapter concludes with an important recognition that photography is an ensemble. As a discourse, it is multi-faceted. It is both “the thing itself” and the contexts which created it and a study of photography wouldn’t be complete without recognizing the two. Photography is both a formalist and a postmodern production that combines aesthetics and politics into complex representations with vast historical connotations.

What I found to be most fascinating was Emerling’s gloss on Benjamin. In conversation with the readings for this class, I think that it is important to remember Benjamin’s ideas on the “rhythm of study” as a progressive journey to mastery that lays “between self-possession and captivation…bewilderment and lucidity, discovery and loss.” We cannot begin to understand Benjamin’s ideas of aura or allegory without the understanding that grasping such concepts takes time. Also, from the gloss is the idea that photography exists in relation to both the past and the present (pg. 45). What are might have expressed as “strange and new” in the past could reveal strange and new today and tomorrow and still not touch on that meaning which wasn’t fully absorbed at the taking of the photograph itself. Finally, I found the concluding thoughts within the gloss to be interesting as well. In Benjamin’s “Little History,” the concept of interest implies an existence between self and another entity, a concern for the other necessary to be oneself. In essence, an image is a thing which humanity must be intimately invested in outside of themselves in order to be whole, seek truth, and understand life. Each of these thoughts give value to photography as a medium no matter which approach an artist might choose. Further, these ideas give purpose to reading the theoretic approaches by emphasizing the benefits critical practice from understanding and enlightenment to self-discovery.

What is the relationship between the Gloss on Benjamin and the main text “The Thing Itself?” (What connections do these texts share and how do they differ? Why did Emerling include the gloss?)