The photo camera and the associated technology of photo
processing are products of the civilization of literacy in
anticipation of the civilization of illiteracy. The metaphor of
the eye, manifest in the optics of the lens and the mechanics of
the camera, could not entirely support new human perceptions of
reality without the participation of literacy. Camera use
implied the shared background of literacy and literacy-based
space representations. The entire discussion of the possibilities
and limitations of photography-a discussion begun shortly after
the first photographic images were produced, and still going on
in our day-is an exercise in analytical practice.
Some looked at photography as writing with light; others as
mechanical drawing. They doubted whether there was room for
creativity in its use, but never questioned its documentary
quality: shorthand for descriptions difficult, but still
possible, in writing. The wider the framework of practical
experiences involving the camera, the more interesting the
testimony of photography proved. This applies to photography in
journalism and science, as well as in personal and family life.
With photography, images started to substitute for words, and
literacy progressively gave way to imagery in a variety of new
human experiences related to space, movement, and aspects of life
otherwise not visible.
Testimony of the invisible, made available to many people
through the photographic camera, was much stronger, richer, and
more authentic than the words one could write about the same.
Early photographs of the Paris sewer system-the latter a subject
of many stories, but literally out of sight-exemplify this
function. Before the camera, only drawing could capture the
visible without changing it into words or obscure diagrams.
Drawing was an interpreted representation, not only in the sense
of selection-what to draw-but also in defining a perspective and
endowing the image with some emotional quality. The camera had a
long way to go before the same interpretive quality was
achieved, and even then, in view of the mediating technology, it
was quite difficult to define what was added to what was
photographed, and why.
Today's cameras-from the disposables to the fully
automated-encapsulate everything we have to know to operate
them. There is no need to be aware of the eye metaphor-which is
undergoing change with the advent of electronic photography-and
even less of what diaphragm, exposure time, and distance are. The
experience leading to photography and the practical experience
of automated photography are uncoupled. To take a picture is no
longer a matter of expertise, but a reflex gesture accompanying
travel, family or community events, and discrete moments of
relative significance. Thus photographic images took over
linguistic descriptions and became our diaries. As confusing as
this might sound, a camera turns into an extension of our eyes
(actually, only one), easier to use than language, and probably
more accurate. In some way, a camera is a compressed language
all set for the generation of visual sentences. If scientific
use of photography were not available, a great deal of effort
would be necessary to verbally describe what images from outer
space, from the powerful electronic microscope, or from under
the earth and under water, reveal to us. In Leonardo da Vinci's
time, the only alternative was drawing, and a very rich
imagination!
The camera has a built-in space concept, probably more explicit
than language has. This concept is asserted and embodied in the
geometry of the lens and is reflected in some of the
characteristics of photographic images. They are, mainly, two-
dimensional reductions of our three-dimensional universe of
experience, also influenced by light, film emulsion, type of
processing, technology and materials used for printing, but
primarily by physical properties of the lens used. Once our
spatial concept improved and progress in lens processing was
made, we were able to change the lens, to make it more adaptive
(wide angle, zoom) to functions related to visual experiences.
We were also able to introduce an element of time control that
helped to capture dynamic events.
Another important change was brought about by Polaroid's concept
of almost instant delivery of prints. It is with this
concept-compressing two stages of photographic representation
into one and, in initial developments, giving up the possibility
of making copies-that we reached a new phase in the relation
between literacy and photography. As we know, the traditional
camera came with the implicit machine-focused conversation: What
can I do with it? The Polaroid concept changed this to a
different query: What can it do for me? This change of emphasis
corresponds to a different experience with the medium and is
accompanied by the liberation of photography from some of the
constraints of the system of literacy. "What can I do?"
concerns photographic knowledge and the selection made by
photographers, persons who constitute their identity in a new
practical experience. "What can it do?" refers to knowledge
embodied in the hardware. The advertisement succinctly describes
the change: "Hold the picture in your hand while you still hold
the memory in your heart." As opposed to a written record, an
instant image is meant for a short time, almost as a fast
substitute for writing.
A more significant change occurs when photography goes
electronic, and in particular, digital. Both elements already
discussed-the significance of the smallest changes in the input
on the result, and the quality aspect of digital vs. analog-are
reflected in digital photography. I insist on this because of the
new condition of the image it entails and our relation to the
realm of the visual. Language found its medium in writing, and
printing made writing the object of literacy. Images could not be
used with the same ease as writing, and could not be transmitted
the way the voice is. When we found ways to have voice travel at
speeds faster than that of sound, by electromagnetic waves used
in telephone or radio transmission, we consolidated the function
of language, but at the same time freed language of some of the
limitations of literacy. Digital photography accomplishes the
same for images.
A written report from any place in the world might take longer
to produce, though not to transmit, than the image representing
the event reported. Connected to a network, an electronic camera
sends images from the event to the page prepared for printing.
The understanding of the image, whose printing involved a digital
component (the raster) long before the computer was invented,
requires a much lower social investment than literacy. The
complexity is transferred from capturing the image to
transmitting and viewing it. Films are used to generate an
electronic simile of our photographic shots. At the friendly
automated image shop, we get colorful prints and the shiny
CD-ROM from which each image can be recalled on a video screen or
further processed on our computers.
From the image as testimony, as literacy destined it to be, to
the image as pretext for new experiences-medium of visual
relativity and questionable morality- everything, and more, is
possible. Images can mediate in fast developing situations-
transactions, exchange of information, conflicts-better than
words can. They are free of the extra burden words bear and
allow for global and detailed local interpretation. Electronic
processing of digital photography supports comparison, as well as
manipulation, of images in view of unprecedented human
experiences requiring such functions. The metaphor of the
one-eye, which the photographic camera embodies, led to a flat
world. Cyclopes see everything flat. Unfortunately, but by no
accident, this metaphor was taken over in computer graphics.
Images on the computer screen are held together by the
conventions of monocular vision. Digital photography can be
networked and endowed with dynamic qualities. But what makes
digital photography more and more a breakthrough, in respect to
its incipient literate phase, is that we can build 3D cameras,
that is, technical beasts with two eyes (and if need be, with
more). This leads to practical experiences in a pragmatic
framework no longer limited to sequences or to reductionist
strategies of representation.
Who is afraid of a locomotive?
The image of a locomotive moving in the direction of the
spectators made them scream and run away when moving pictures
were first shown to the public. Movement enhanced the realism of
the image, captured on film to the extent of blurring the
borderline between reality and the newly established convention
of cinematographic expression. In the movies of the silent era,
the literacy-based realism of the image- actually an
illustration of the script-successfully compensated for the
impossibility of providing the sound of dialogue. The experience
of literacy and that of writing movement onto film were tightly
coupled. Short scenes, designed with close attention to visual
details, could be understood without the presence of the word,
because of the shared background of language. The convention of
cinematography is based on sharing the extended white page on
which the projection of moving images takes place. Humor was the
preferred structure, since the mechanical reproduction of
movement had, due to rudimentary technology and lack of sound, a
comic quality in itself. Later, music was inserted, then
dialogue. Everyone was looking forward to the day when image and
sound would be synchronized, when color movies would become
possible.
It adds to the arguments thus far advanced that cinematographic
human experience, an experience dominantly visual, revealed the
role of language as a synchronizing device, while the mechanics
of cameras and projectors took care of the optical illusion.
Cinematography also suggested that this role could be exercised
by other means of expression and communication as well. Language
is related to body movement, and often participates in the
rhythmic patterns of this movement. Before language, other
rhythmic devices better adapted to the unsettled
self-constitutive practical experience of the Homo Hominis were
used to synchronize the effort of several beings involved in the
endeavor of survival. Although there is no relation between the
experience of cinematography and that of primitive beings on the
move after migrating herds of animals, it is worth pointing out
the underlying structure of synchronicity. The means involved in
achieving this synchronicity are characteristic of the various
stages in human evolution. At a very small scale of existence,
such as autarchic existence, the means were very simple, and
very few. At the scale that makes the writing of movement
possible, these means had become complex, but were dominated by
literacy. With cinematography, a new strategy of synchronization
was arrived at. In many ways, the story of how films became what
they are today is also the story of a conflict between literacy
and image-based strategies of synchronization.
The intermediary phases are well known: the film accompanied by
music ("Don't kill the pianist"), recorded sound, sound
integrated in the movie, stereophonic sound. Their significance
is also known: emulate the rhythm of filmed movement, provide a
dramatic background, integrate the realism of dialogue and other
real sounds in the realism of action, expand the means of
expression in order to synthesize new realities. Some of the
conventions of the emerging film are cultural accomplishments,
probably comparable to the convention of ideographic writing.
They belong, nevertheless, to a pragmatic context based on the
characteristics of literacy. They ensue also from an activity
that will result in higher and higher levels of human
productivity and efficiency. Each film is a mold for the many
copies to be shown to millions of spectators. The personal touch
of handwriting is obfuscated by the neutral camera-a mechanical
device, after all. That the same story can be told in many
different ways does not change the fact that, once told, it
addresses enormous numbers of potential viewers, no longer
required to master literacy in order to understand the film's
content. The experience of filmmaking is industrially defined.
It also bears witness to the many components of human
interaction, opening a window on experiences irreducible to
words; and it points to the possibility of going beyond literacy,
and even beyond the first layers of the visible-that is, to
appropriate the imaginary in the self-constitution of the human
being.
Some of the changes sketched above occurred when cinematography,
after its phase of theater on film, started to compress
language, and to search for its own expressive potential.
Compression of language means the use of images to diminish the
quantity of words necessary to constitute a viable filmic
expression, as well as the effort to summarize literature.
Indeed, in view of the limitations of the medium, especially
during its imitative phase, it could not support scripts based on
literary works that exceeded film's own complexity.
Cinematography had also to deal with the limited span of its
viewers' attention, their lack of any previous exposure to moving
images, and the conditions for viewing a film. When, later on,
filmmakers compressed entire books into 90 to 120 minutes, we
entered a phase of human experience characterized by
substituting written with non- or para-linguistic means.
The generations since the beginning of cinematography learned the
new filmic convention while still involved in practical
experiences characteristic of literacy. Conventions of film, as
a medium with its own characteristics, started to be experienced
relatively recently, in the broader context of a human praxis in
the process of freeing itself from the constraints of literacy.
Films are an appropriate medium for integration of the visual,
the aural, and motion. People can record on film some of their
most intricate experiences, and afterwards submit the record to
fast, slow, entire, or partial evaluation. The experience of
filming is an experience with space and time in their
interrelationship. But as opposed to the space and time
projected in language, and uniformly shared by a literate
community, space and time on film can be varied, and made
extremely personal. Within the convention of film, we can
uncouple ourselves from the physical limitations of our universe
of existence, from social or cultural commitments, and generate
a new frame for action. The love affair between Hollywood and
emerging technologies for creating the impossible in the virtual
space of digital synthesis testifies to this. But we cannot,
after all, transcend the limitations of the underlying structure
on which cinematography is based. Generated near the height of
the civilization of literacy, cinematography represents the
borderline between practical experiences corresponding to the
scale for which literacy was optimal, and the new scale for which
both literacy and film are only partially adequate. It is even
doubtful that the film medium will survive as an alternative to
the new media because it is, for all practical purposes,
inefficient.
Cinematography influenced our experience with language, while
simultaneously pointing to the limits of this experience. A film
is not a visually illustrated text, or a transcription of a
play. Rather, it is a mapping from a universe of sentences and
meanings assigned to a text, to a more complex universe, one of
consecutive images forming (or not) a new coherent entity. In
the process, language performs sometimes as language (dialogue
among characters), other times as a pre-text for the visual
cinematographic text.
Before film, we moved only in the universe of our natural,
physical existence, on the theatrical stage, or in the universe
of our imagination, in our dreams. The synchronizing function of
language made this movement (such as working, going from one
place to another, from one person to another) socially relevant.
Our movement in language descriptions (do this, go there, meet
so-and-so) is an abstraction. Our movement recorded on film is
the re-concretized abstraction. This explains the role of filmed
images for teaching people how to carry out certain operations,
for educating, or for indoctrinating them, or for acquainting
them with things and actions never experienced directly. It also
explains why, once efficiency criteria become important, film no
longer addresses the individual, or small groups; rather, it
addresses audiences at the only scale at which it can still be
economically justified. The industry called Hollywood (and its
various copies around the world) is based on an equation of
efficiency that keys in the globality of the world, of
illiteracy, and of the distribution network already in place. On
an investment in a film of over $100 million, five continents
of viewers are needed, and this is still no guarantee of breaking
even. It is not at all clear whether Dreamworks, the offspring
of the affair between Hollywood and the computer industry, will
eventually create its own distribution channels on the global
digital network.
The temptation to ask whether the language of moving images made
literacy superfluous, or whether illiteracy created the need for
film, and the risk of falling prey to a simplifying
cause-and-effect explanation should not prevent us from
acknowledging that there are many relations among the factors
involved. Nevertheless, the key element is the underlying
structure. Books embody the characteristics of language and
trigger experiences within the confines of these
characteristics. When faced with practical requirements and
challenges resulting from a new scale of existence, the human
being constitutes alternatives better adapted to a dynamics of
change for which books and the experience they entail are only
partially appropriate.
Books in which even literate people sometimes got lost, or for
which we do not have time or patience, are interpreted for us,
condensed in the movie. The fact is that more than a generation
has now had access to established works of fiction and drama, as
well as scientific, historic, or geographic accounts only through
films. A price was paid-there is no equivalent between the book
and film-and is being paid, but this is not the issue here. What
is the issue is the advent of cinematography in the framework in
which literacy ceased to support experiences other than those
based on its structure.
Films are mediating expressions better adapted than language to a
more segmented reality of social existence. They are also
adapted to the dynamics of change and to the global nature of
human existence. They prepared us for electronic media, but not
before generating those strange books (or are they?) that
transcribe films for a market so obsessed with success that it
will buy the rudimentary transcription together with the
paraphernalia derived from the stage design and from the
costumes used by the characters. We can find substitutes for
coal or oil or tin, but seemingly not for success and stars. As
a result, everything they touch or are associated with enters the
circuit of our own practical existence. An American journalist
ended his commentary occasioned by Greta Garbo's death: "Today
they no longer make legends, but celebrities."