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Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature

Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature

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Description, about the author, table of contents.

Scott Walden (Editor)

ISBN: 978-0-470-69589-0 April 2008 Wiley-Blackwell 344 Pages

List of Figures.

Contributors.

Introduction (Scott Walden, New York University).

1. Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism (Kendall L. Walton, University of Michigan).

2. Photographs and Icons (Cynthia Freeland, University of Houston).

3. Photographs as Evidence (Aaron Meskin, University of Leeds and Jonathan Cohen, University of California, San Diego).

4. Truth in Photography (Scott Walden, New York University).

5. Documentary Authority and the Art of Photography (Barbara Savedoff, City University of New York).

6. Photography and Representation (Roger Scruton, University of Buckingham).

7. How Photographs "Signify": Cartier-Bresson’s "Reply" to Scruton (David Davies, McGill University).

8. Scales of Space and Time in Photography: "Perception Points Two Ways" (Patrick Maynard, University of Western Ontario).

9. True Appreciation (Dominic Lopes, University of British Columbia).

10. Landscape and Still Life: Static Representations of Static Scenes (Kendall Walton, University of Michigan).

11. The Problem with Movie Stars (Noël Carroll, Temple University).

12. Pictures of King Arthur: Photography and the Power of Narrative (Gregory Currie, University of Nottingham).

13. The Naked Truth (Arthur C. Danto, Columbia University).

Bibliography.

"How does one accept or deny 'reality' in photographic excursions? This is the central issue in this extraordinary compilation of 13 essays by contemporary philosophers who argue back and forth (in editor Walden's clever arrangement) so that readers must engage their own minds within the constantly conflicting (theoretical and personal) propositions/explanations. This is a rich, provocative, intelligent, challenging, and important compilation. Highly recommended." ( Choice , November 2008)

"Many of the essays are well written and indeed groundbreaking … .Given its overall depth, the anthology is worth reading by any critic, curator or student of the arts." ( Prefix Photo , 2008)

"Will enlighten the student and refresh the informed. Contributes greatly to the literature and will occupy a favorite spot on the book shelves." ( Metapsychology )

New Directions in Aesthetics

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature

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Scott Walden (ed.), Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature , Blackwell Publishing, 2008, 325pp., $79.95 (hbk), ISBN 9781405139243.

Reviewed by John Andrew Fisher, University of Colorado at Boulder

Shows devoted to photography seem to be everywhere in the art world. As Scott Walden, the editor of this collection of essays notes, photography "has become the darling of the avant-garde." It appears that photography has become trendier than painting. One reason for this may be that while the nature and scope of painting has been thoroughly investigated over the last two centuries, photography appears to be relatively unexplored. Moreover, as a medium photography has the advantage over both painting and sculpture of permeating social life and thus of appearing to be easier to understand in an art-world setting than other art forms. In addition, the variety of uses of photography in everyday life -- portraits, snapshots, fashion and advertising photographs -- provide artists with a multitude of genres to explore and often parody.

Perhaps surprisingly then, only a few of the thirteen essays that make up this collection directly address the artistic or conceptual content of current art photography. This is not to say that the collection is in any way disappointing. On the contrary, it is a ground-breaking, cutting-edge anthology of essays by leading analytic philosophers of art all focused in one way or another on the foundations of photography. In his contribution to the collection, Walden elaborates on his focus on truth in images with an explanation that could also serve as a rationale for the entire collection:

the operative assumption here is that the best methodology for understanding our appreciation of pictures involves first developing an understanding of their most literal aspects, and then proceeding to an understanding of the more complex aspects in terms of these relatively simple ones… . The faith is that if we can understand truth in relation to the depiction of the simple, visible properties of people and objects depicted, we can then, in terms of these and some other -- as yet undetermined -- principles governing the viewing of pictures, arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of the use of images in journalism, advertising, illustration, and art. (p. 94)

This faith might seem debatable, but in fact these essays do indirectly illuminate photography as art even when that is not their primary goal. By undermining the complacency with which we approach a mass art medium, they indirectly address the central aesthetic question that arises in looking at art photography: "In what ways can I appreciate a photograph aesthetically?"

Why does photography merit extended philosophical examination? Few other art media have troubled art theorists as much as photography, and this has been true since its inception in the nineteenth-century. Only instrumental classical music has fascinated philosophers as much. In pure instrumental music there is no intrinsic representational content, yet the music feels as if it is saying something and sounds as if it expresses emotions. In the case of photography we have the opposite problem: instead of too little representation, we have nothing but pure representation; we see nothing in a photograph but the objects that are photographed.

There are four fundamental issues that underlie the more specific themes of these essays: (i) What is the nature of photography? (ii) Given this nature, can photographs as photographs be fine art? (iii) How does photographic representation differ from other types of visual representation? and (iv) In what way are photographs more realistic, objective or true than representations produced in more traditional media?

Most of the papers were written especially for this anthology, although three chapters are reprints of papers by prominent figures in analytic aesthetics (Kendall Walton, Roger Scruton, Arthur Danto). Two of these papers, Walton's "Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism," and Scruton's "Photography and Representation," are classics and serve to anchor the anthology by providing influential albeit controversial accounts of the foundations of photography. Walton argues that photographs are 'transparent,' by which he means that in looking at photographs we "quite literally" see their subjects. Scruton argues that a photograph cannot be what he calls a "representation," and by this he intends to imply that it cannot qua photograph be a work of art. To make their arguments, these two thinkers develop extended analyses of concepts central to photographs: in Walton's case, the concepts of seeing and visual experience, and in Scruton's case, the concept of an artistic representation. In relating photography to more general concepts, these papers join several others in the anthology. For example, Danto argues that individuals have rights over the way they appear, a meditation spawned by what he regards as untruthful photographic portraits.

Although the anthology is not divided into sections, one can collect most of the articles into three main groupings. The first group consists of five articles, all directed at analyses of the realism, objectivity, and truth that we attach to photographs: Walton on the transparency of photography, Cynthia Freeland on icons, Aaron Meskin and Jonathan Cohen on evidence, Walden on truth and Barbara Savedoff on authority. Danto's contribution, "The Naked Truth," also explores the specific sort of truth that might be ascribed to photographic portraits. He proposes a distinction between the optical truth that a high-speed photograph, which he calls a 'still,' might reveal and the natural way we see people or things. He argues that the "still … shows the world as we are not able to perceive it visually. It shows us the world from the perspective of stopped time" (300). Such photos often lie as portraits, Danto thinks, and when they do, they violate the personhood of the subject by failing to respect the image the subject desires to project to the community.

In "Transparent Pictures" Walton aims to understand the sort of realism possessed by photographs. He notes that photographs are not necessarily more accurate than paintings, yet he supports the idea that photography is "a supremely realistic medium" (21)). There is a gap, in his view, between the realism and immediacy of photography and what can be achieved by painting. He rejects the idea that in looking at a photograph we are having an illusion, as if we are mistaking the photograph for the objects photographed. His big claim is rather that photography "gave us a new way of seeing" (21). He means this quite literally: "Nor is my point that what we see -- photographs -- are duplicates or doubles or reproductions of objects … My claim is that we see , quite literally, our dead relatives themselves when we look at photographs of them" (22). He argues for this in several ways. One is a slippery slope argument, moving from seeing objects by means of mirrors, telescopes, etc. to seeing objects via live broadcast television, to seeing objects in documentary film. Although this implies seeing the past, he thinks we accept that we see events that occurred millions of years ago through a telescope. He does allow that we see photographed objects indirectly . Nor does he claim that we fail to see the photographs themselves. We see the objects -- our dead relatives -- by seeing the photograph; "one hears both a bell and the sound that it makes" (24).

Don't we also say that we 'see' Lincoln in a painting? Walton argues that this is fictional seeing, and this is because the sort of seeing involved applies equally to non-existent painted objects. Walton's theory of photography and of the way it differs from painting is based on the mechanical process of forming images which characterizes photography. Whether through an optical-and-chemical or digital process, once the shutter is triggered the image is determined by what is in front of the lens, not by the beliefs of the photographer:

The essential difference between paintings and photographs is the difference in the manner in which in which they … are based on beliefs of their makers. Photographs are counterfactually dependent on the photographic scene even if the beliefs (and other intentional attitudes) of the photographer are fixed. Paintings which have a counterfactual dependence on the scene portrayed lose it when the beliefs (and other intentional attitudes) of the painter are fixed. (38)

If a painter who is trying to depict the scene in front of her believes that there is a gorilla in the scene, she will put it in the painting even if it is not actually there, whereas even if a photographer also has that belief, a gorilla will not appear in the image if one does not exist in front of the camera.

The transparency of photographs is not about how photographs look, but about how we take them to imply that the objects we see in them existed. This explains, he suggests, why we experience a sort of shock when we learn that a Chuck Close photo-realist self-portrait is not a photograph: "We feel somehow less 'in contact with' Close when we learn that the portrayal of him is not photographic" (27). By contrast, "[v]iewers of photographs are in perceptual contact with the world" (48). This is not to deny that photographs, like some mirrors, can distort, nor that some photographs are constructions (combinations) that taken as a whole are not transparent.

Walton even allows that a "photograph, no less than a painting, has a subjective point of view" (35). Still, his account raises the question of whether the causal process that announces the existence of the objects photographed is the only defining characteristic of photography. Doesn't the photograph also show how these things appeared? Do we not only see our dead relatives, but also that the scene appeared a certain way ? Yet that appearance is the result of adjustments of many variables by the photographer. Although Walton says, "[p]hotography can be an enormously expressive medium," (35), it is not obvious how his account of the literal seeing involved in seeing a photograph addresses the subjective and expressive aspects of photographs. In literally seeing the objects in a photograph do we also literally see what they looked like? We think we do, but is there a basis for this thought in the transparency of photography?

The four papers that follow Walton's all grapple with photography's realism or truth. Freeland's "Photographs and Icons" points out that there are two senses of "realism," an epistemological sense related to truth and accuracy, and a psychological sense related to psychological force. She usefully employs terminology of Patrick Maynard's to mark this distinction as the difference between the "depictive" function of a picture and its "manifestation" function, which is similar to Walton's notion that we 'contact' the objects we see in the photograph. By describing an impressive parallel between photographs and religious icons, she presses the argument that photographic realism as the manifestation of the objects photographed has less to do with our beliefs in the epistemic status of photography than it does with our attitudes and emotions, such as the desire to sustain contact with departed people. In so far as her argument centers on portraits, whether of saints in icons or of people in photographs, it would be interesting to ask if it implies that we do not feel in contact with the non-human objects in, say, landscape photographs.

In "Photographs and Evidence," Meskin and Cohen approach realism from a different angle. They reject Walton's claim that we literally see the objects in photographs. Instead, they analyze the special epistemic status of (depictive) photographs in terms of their information content: "photographs typically provide information about many of the visually detectable properties of the objects they depict" (72). They follow Dretske in understanding that "information is carried when there is an objective, probabilistic, counterfactually supporting link between two independent events" (72). Because it is an objective link, their notion of the information carried by a photograph is independent of any subject's beliefs or other mental states. Their claim about photographic information is weaker than it might at first appear to be. Consider color: "photographs typically carry information about the color of the objects they depict -- if the colors of the objects had been different then the photographic image would have been different" (73). This concedes that the photograph does not tell the viewer what the color is ; as they note, "systematically replacing the colors of a picture with their complements would not thereby change the informational content of that picture" (74). They contrast visual or v-information about the appearance of objects with information about the egocentric location of the objects they depict, which they call e-information. In their view, the special epistemic status of photography is grounded on the fact that photographs provide v-information without providing e-information, whereas ordinary seeing provides both sorts of information.

Walden's "Truth in Photography," looks at photographs as potential sources of true beliefs. He contrasts objectively formed images -- those produced mechanically, such as photographs -- with subjectively formed images, such as handmade images. He argues that "we generally have better reason to accept beliefs engendered by viewing photographic images than we do those engendered by viewing handmade ones" (104). He concludes by considering whether the wide-spread adoption of digital-imaging techniques will undermine our confidence in the objectivity (mechanical nature) of the image-forming process. He argues that it is in "our collective interests to resist the implementation of such techniques [that undermine objectivity]" (109). One reason is that even if we still form true beliefs from looking at an image, these will be less epistemically valuable if we lack grounds for confidence in their truth.

Savedoff's contribution explores what she calls the documentary authority that we ascribe to photography: we regard a photograph as capturing a bit of the actual world. She makes this key to the ways that art photographs work; whether recognizably depictive or more abstract, they depend on and play off of this authority. The effectiveness of many artistic photos depend on our taking them as factual. She shows how the irony or humor of a photograph is made more profound because we regard the scene depicted as really in the world, not constructed by the photographer. She goes on to show how artistic photographs, because of their authority as photographs, often force the viewer to disambiguate complex images and thus see the world made strange. This authority also accounts for an important distinction between abstract paintings and abstract photographs. In the latter we are enticed to play a game of identifying the actual objects photographed. In a Cubist painting "the forms refer to objects … In the case of photographs, the forms are the forms of the objects before the lens" (122).

A second group of articles revolves around Roger Scruton's position. In "Photography and Representation" Scruton couples many of the same basic facts about photography that other authors accept with his own not implausible view of what an artistic representation of the world is to conclude that photographs as such can never be artistic representations: "photography is not a representational art" (139). It should be said that he is referring to a logically ideal photography, which he defines as having a purely causal and non-intentional relation to its subject. An ideal photograph of x implies that x exists and that it is, roughly, as it appears in the photograph. Yes, there is an intentional act involved in taking the photo, but it is not an essential part of the photographic relation. The appearance of the subject, therefore, is "not interesting as the realization of an intention but rather as a record of how an actual object looked" (140). Appearances in a representational painting are a different story. "The aim of painting is to give insight, and the creation of an appearance is important mainly as the expression of thought" (148). Given how they are defined, ideal photographs cannot express thoughts. He argues that "if one finds a photograph beautiful, it is because one finds something beautiful in its subject" (152). On the other hand, in so far as the photographer manipulates the image in some way, going beyond the 'ideal' photographic process, for example in a photo-montage, she becomes a painter. So, Scruton in effect presents a dilemma for anyone who would defend the possibility of photographs as art: either a given photograph is an 'ideal' photograph and hence not an artistic representation or it is in important ways not photography but a form of painting. To answer this challenge one would have to show that the photographic process involves possibilities for expression of the artist's thought and style that lie outside of Scruton's stark options.

Articles by David Davies and Patrick Maynard follow and counter Scruton's argument by going into details of photographic composition. Davies' "How Photographs Signify" takes direct aim at Scruton's argument by developing ideas drawn from Rudolph Arnheim and Cartier-Bresson. Davies shows how the geometry of a carefully composed photograph prevents the viewer from perceiving it as a "transparent window upon its subject" and instead leads her "to see the subject in a particular way." So, contra Scruton, there is a "thought embodied in perceptual form" (182-183). Maynard ("Scales of Space and Time in Photography") presents the most detailed analysis of the various dimensions of a photograph -- negative space, dynamics, etc. -- to argue that there are "inextricable but irreducible artistic values in snapshot art." Savedoff's sensitive discussion of various genres of art photography also provides weight to the argument against Scruton.

A third theme of the collection involves comparisons between films and still photographs. Scruton inspects film's credentials to be art in spite of its being a series of photographs (an artistic defect from his point of view). Gregory Currie ("Photography and the Power of Narrative") compares the ability of still photographs and film to support a narrative. In his second contribution to the anthology, "Landscape and Still Life," Walton investigates the differences between what can be depicted in a still picture and in a moving picture. Both Walton and Currie sketch accounts of the viewer's imaginative experience to explain the difference between what can be depicted in still and moving photographs.

Noël Carroll ("The Problem with Movie Stars") notes that movie stars often bring a persona to a movie role and that this persona is sometimes essential to our understanding of the narrative of the movie. He argues that this fact is inconsistent with standard assumptions about how we should understand fictional narratives. These assumptions dictate that extra-work information about an actor is not relevant to an understanding of the fictional world of the work. The cognitive background relevant to appreciating photographs as photographs is also explored by Dominic Lopes ("True Appreciation"). He contrasts two principles of adequate appreciation in general. One drawn from the theories of nature appreciation of Allen Carlson and Malcolm Budd requires that "an appreciation of O as a K is adequate only if O is a K" (212). One's appreciation of a whale will be inadequate if one appreciates it as a fish rather than a mammal. A different principle requires that "an appreciation of O as a K is adequate only as far as it does not depend counterfactually on any belief that is inconsistent with the truth about the nature of Ks" (213). He suggests reasons to favor the latter requirement as a general principle. However, this principle implies that our aesthetic appreciation of photographs is inadequate to the degree that we find them compelling because we have false beliefs about the accuracy with which photography records how things look.

I note in conclusion that Walden provides a thorough Introduction and an extensive Bibliography. As you would expect, there are photographs (32 of them) that illustrate the arguments. There is also a substantial Index, which is a bonus in an edited book. All in all, this is a very valuable collection that gathers together a set of articles and issues that should be of general interest to philosophers of art. As an anthology of analytic philosophy of art this collection may be most appropriate for upper-division and graduate aesthetics courses, although it would also be a provocative addition to interdisciplinary courses in photographic or film theory.

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Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature

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Article Contents

Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature edited by walden, scott

ZED ADAMS, Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature edited by walden, scott , The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Volume 68, Issue 3, August 2010, Pages 319–320, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2010.01423_9.x

WALDEN, SCOTT, ed. Photography and Philosophy:Essays on the Pencil of Nature. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008, xii + 325 pp., $79.95 cloth.

Putting together a collection of new essays is difficult. If contributors are given free rein to write on anything relating to a specific topic, the result is usually more a reflection of their independent interests than a coherent collection of essays. If the editor tries to ensure coherence by dictating the topics to be addressed by individual authors, their contributions usually end up being more like encyclopedia entries than original essays. One of the most attractive features of Scott Walden's collection, Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature , is that it successfully avoids both of these pitfalls. Walden does this by structuring the volume around a series of responses to two influential, previously published essays in the philosophy of photography, both of which are reprinted in the volume. The resulting collection has the feel of an extended conversation on a variety of related topics by a community of philosophers who are intimately familiar with one another's work. The overarching theme of their conversation is the philosophical significance of the mechanical nature of photography.

The two previously published essays that anchor Walden's volume are Kendall Walton's “Transparent Pictures” and Roger Scruton's “Photography and Representation.” (There is also a previously published piece by Arthur Danto, but it is not part of the main conversation of the book.) Walton's and Scruton's essays partake in the tradition of provoking philosophical discussion and debate by saying something that no one could really believe (or, at least, something that one might think no one could really believe). Walton, for instance, argues that looking at photographs is akin to looking through telescopes into the past. He claims that we literally see through photographs into the past and thereby come into direct contact with the actual states of affairs that they depict. This capacity of photographs gives them special epistemic status, because we are literally seeing something that once happened. In order to explain this capacity of photographs, Walton introduces an abstract characterization of what it is for a representation to be mechanically produced. On his account, a photograph is mechanically produced insofar as the content of the photograph is independent of the content of the photographer's own beliefs about what the photograph depicts. Scruton's argument starts from a similar claim, that photographs are mechanically produced insofar as they are representations that do not express their makers’ thoughts about what they are representing. Scruton takes this possibility of photography to imply that the only aesthetic interest we can take in photographs is with regard to the aesthetic properties of the states of affairs that they depict. Once again, the idea is that we literally see through photographs to the actual states of affairs they depict. On both Walton's and Scruton's accounts, photographs are like telescopes or windows; in this sense, they are not really representations at all. Scruton takes this to imply that photography, as such, cannot be an art form, because it cannot itself be used to represent or express an artist's thoughts or feelings.

As you might imagine, many of the new essays written for this volume take issue with Walton's and Scruton's provocative claims. Cynthia Freeland offers an alternative explanation for the sense of direct contact that photographs sometimes provide: she argues that this is not because of photography's special epistemic status, but because photographs participate in the long tradition of making and using portraits in an attempt to maintain contact with the dead. It is unclear whether this implies that if one is skeptical about prephotographic attempts to use portraits to maintain contact with the dead, one should be similarly skeptical of the sense of direct contact that photographic portraits sometimes provide, or whether the mechanical nature of photography somehow allows it to succeed at doing something that previous forms of portraiture attempted but failed to do. Aaron Meskin and Jonathan Cohen critique the claim that we literally see through photographs on the grounds that photographs only provide us with information about how objects look, not where they are spatially located. Does this imply that we would not see through a sufficiently complicated periscope if it prevented us from spatially locating objects around multiple corners? Like Freeland, they propose to explain the sense of direct contact in photography in terms of psychological facts about the viewers of photographs, rather than in terms of any sort of special epistemic status of photographs themselves.

Scott Walden's own contribution attempts to refine Walton's account of the special epistemic status of photographs. Although he grants that the mechanical nature of photography is no guarantee that the beliefs we form from looking at them are true, he nonetheless thinks that a suitably refined account of the mechanical process of making photographs justifies thinking of them as an epistemically privileged sort of representation. I will return to this idea, which runs throughout the volume, at the end of my review. Barbara Savendoff explores some of the ways in which photographers are able to exploit the documentary authority of photography for artistic ends.

The two pieces that most directly engage with Scruton's essay are by David Davies and Patrick Maynard. They both argue against Scruton's claim that our only aesthetic interest in photographs is in the aesthetic properties of the states of affairs that they depict, on the grounds that the composition of photographic images involves a considerable amount of input from photographers. Maynard's essay, in particular, introduces and discusses a number of useful concepts for understanding the successful composition of photographs (for example, negative space, dynamics, and rhythm). Both essays emphasize the ways in which certain forms of photography are valued precisely because photographers do not have complete control over the actual layout of the states of affairs in the world that their photographs depict. As Maynard puts this point, “[s]uccessful fishers are not criticized for not having placed the fish on their hooks or in their nets” (p. 207).

The remaining new essays in the volume, by Dominick McIver Lopes, Kendall Walton (his second essay in the volume), Noël Carroll, and Gregory Currie, do not directly engage with the previously published essays by Walton and Scruton but rather discuss related issues, especially with regard to aesthetic issues concerning the similarities and differences between photography and film. As I noted above, however, the overarching theme of this volume concerns the philosophical significance of the mechanical nature of photography. Several of the writers follow Walton in thinking that there is a deep difference between mechanically produced photographs and handmade images, and that we can explain this difference in terms of the way in which the content of photographs is independent of the content of photographers’ beliefs about what their photographs depict. I myself am skeptical about such an explanation for two reasons. First, this cannot be the right way to formulate a distinction between photographs and handmade images, since it is possible to create handmade images that equally well bypass the beliefs of their makers about what they depict. Tracing the outline shapes of the objects seen through a window will produce a handmade image that nonetheless bypasses its maker's beliefs about the objects depicted. Second, and more importantly, the possibility of such handmade images undermines Walton's explanation for thinking that photographs put us in direct contact with the states of affairs they depict, since we do not experience such handmade images as putting us in direct contact with what they depict. In short, if there is any substance to the idea that photographs put us in direct contact with what they depict, it must be because of something other than their mechanical nature (at least, as according to the abstract characterization of this mechanical nature that Walton introduces).

As a whole, Walden's collection is a valuable addition to the philosophical literature on photography. It is well organized and contains a sustained discussion of many of the more provocative claims that philosophers have made about photography. It is still an open question whether any of these claims are true, but rather than simply dwelling upon the banal truths that we all already agree upon, it is a lot more interesting to start, as Walden does, with the moments when philosophers are led to say things that are almost impossible to believe and work from there.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

William henry fox talbot (1800–1877) and the invention of photography.

[The Oriel Window, South Gallery, Lacock Abbey]

[The Oriel Window, South Gallery, Lacock Abbey]

William Henry Fox Talbot

Wrack

Tavola parecchiata per colazione a Thè

Articles of Glass

Articles of Glass

Bust of Patroclus

Bust of Patroclus

A Scene in a Library

A Scene in a Library

The Open Door

The Open Door

The Tomb of Sir Walter Scott, in Dryburgh Abbey

The Tomb of Sir Walter Scott, in Dryburgh Abbey

Nelson's Column under Construction, Trafalgar Square

Nelson's Column under Construction, Trafalgar Square

The Pencil of Nature

The Pencil of Nature

[Dandelion Seeds]

[Dandelion Seeds]

Malcolm Daniel Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

A young English gentleman on his honeymoon sat sketching by the shore of Lake Como early in October 1833, one eye pressed close to a camera lucida. With this simple draftsman’s aid, consisting of an adjustable metal arm fastened at one end to the artist’s sketchbook or drawing board and supporting a glass prism at the other, the young man saw a refracted image of the Italian landscape superimposed as if by magic on the pages of his sketchbook. It seemed a simple task to trace the features of the village buildings, lake, and distant mountains with his pencil. But alas, it only seemed simple, he later recalled, “for when the eye was removed from the prism—in which all looked beautiful—I found that the faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold.”

The would-be artist was William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877). A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a recently elected Liberal member of Parliament in the House of Commons, Talbot was a true polymath. His intellectual curiosity embraced the fields of mathematics, chemistry, astronomy , and botany; philosophy and philology; Egyptology, the classics, and art history. He had published four books and twenty-seven scholarly articles on a variety of subjects and was a fellow of the Astronomical, Linnean, and Royal Societies. Amid shopping lists and daily reminders, he filled his pocket diaries with the titles of books to read, complex mathematical formulas, and notations of experiments and experiences.

Talbot’s frustration that day with the camera lucida led him to recollect his experiences ten years earlier with another drafting aid, the camera obscura—a small wooden box with a lens at one end that projected the scene before it onto a piece of frosted glass at the back, where the artist could trace the outlines on thin paper. The camera obscura, too, had left Talbot with unsatisfactory results, but it was not his own feeble drawings that he remembered after a decade. Rather he recalled with pleasure “the inimitable beauty of the pictures of nature’s painting which the glass lens of the Camera throws upon the paper in its focus—fairy pictures, creations of a moment, and destined as rapidly to fade away.” These thoughts in turn prompted Talbot to muse “how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper.” “And why should it not be possible?” he asked himself. Talbot jotted down thoughts about experiments he could conduct at home to see if Nature, through the action of light on material substances, might be brought to draw her own picture.

In January 1834, Talbot returned home to Lacock Abbey, an amalgamation of buildings incorporating the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century remains of a former abbey about eighty-five miles west of London. Within a few months, he began to experiment with the idea that had occurred to him at Lake Como and soon found that a sheet of fine writing paper, coated with salt and brushed with a solution of silver nitrate, darkened in the sun, and that a second coating of salt impeded further darkening or fading. Talbot used this discovery to make precise tracings of botanical specimens: he set a pressed leaf or plant on a piece of sensitized paper, covered it with a sheet of glass, and set it in the sun. Wherever the light struck, the paper darkened, but wherever the plant blocked the light, it remained white. He called his new discovery “the art of photogenic drawing.”

As his chemistry improved, Talbot returned to his original idea of photographic images made in a camera. During the “brilliant summer of 1835,” he took full advantage of the unusually abundant sunshine and placed pieces of sensitized photogenic drawing paper in miniature cameras— “mouse traps,” his wife called them—set around the grounds to record the silhouette of Lacock Abbey’s animated roofline and trees. The pictures, Talbot wrote, “without great stretch of the imagination might be supposed to be the work of some Lilliputian artist.”

Occupied with other activities, Talbot worked little on his invention between the sunny days of 1835 and January 1839, when the stunning news arrived that a Frenchman, Louis Daguerre , had invented a wholly different means of recording camera pictures with dazzling precision on metal plates. Preempted just at the moment when he was beginning to revisit his earlier experiments with an eye toward publication, Talbot scrambled to stake a claim to priority, to produce pictures that might compare favorably with Daguerre’s, and to solve the problems of lengthy exposure times and fugitive prints. Well before Daguerre revealed the details of his process, Talbot presented his own before the Royal Society in January and February 1839. At the time of Talbot’s announcement, his “art of photogenic drawing” was clearly better suited for recording the shadows of plant specimens, lace, or similar flat objects by direct contact—pictures we would now describe as photograms—than for camera images.

Although such photogenic drawings were beautiful as objects and useful as scientific records, Talbot knew that a fast, permanent, and accurate means of producing photographic images in the camera was the true brass ring, and on September 23, 1840, he found a way to seize it. Talbot discovered that an exposure of mere seconds, leaving no visible trace on the chemically treated paper, nonetheless left a latent image that could be brought out with the application of an “exciting liquid” (essentially a solution of gallic acid). This discovery, which Talbot patented in February 1841 as the “calotype” process (from the Greek kalos , meaning beautiful), opened up a whole new world of possible subjects for photography.

Talbot’s early photogenic drawings, such as those in the Bertoloni Album, with their shades of lilac and lavender, remained fugitive, for they were only partially stabilized with a solution of salt. A more permanent means of “fixing” the image with hyposulfite of soda was proposed by Talbot’s friend the eminent scientist Sir John Herschel; “hypo” was adopted by Talbot for most prints beginning in the early 1840s and is still used today as a fixer for black-and-white photographs. With all the pieces of a workable process now in place, Talbot set out to promote his invention at home and abroad. He traveled to Paris in May 1843 to negotiate (unsuccessfully) a licensing agreement for the French rights to his patented calotype process and to give firsthand instruction in its use. At home, he demonstrated the commercial viability of his invention by means of a photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature , published in parts beginning in 1844. In less than a decade, Talbot conceived and brought about a wholly new way of making pictures, perfected the optical and chemical aspects of photography, and learned to use the new medium to make complex images for the botanist, historian, traveler, and artist.

Talbot spent the last twenty-five years of his life developing and perfecting an effective photogravure process. That he should have spent so much time developing a process for printing photographs with ink rather than silver salts is not wholly surprising. Talbot’s early photogenic drawings are so ephemeral that, despite their exceptional beauty, they can never be exhibited or exposed to light without risk of change. Even his far more stable calotypes fixed with hypo were inconsistent in their permanence, many deteriorating in quick order; a reviewer of the 1862 International Exhibition described some photographs as “fading before the eyes of the nations assembled.” Thus, Talbot’s search for a photographic process using permanent printer’s ink was a final step in the refinement of his earlier, still imperfect, invention.

Daniel, Malcolm. “William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) and the Invention of Photography.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tlbt/hd_tlbt.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Schaaf, Larry J. Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Schaaf, Larry J. The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

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1. Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism (Kendall Walton, University of Michigan).

2. Photographs and Icons (Cynthia Freeland, University of Houston).

3. Photographs as Evidence (Aaron Meskin, Texas Tech University and Jonathan Cohen, University of California, San Diego).

4. Truth in Photography (Scott Walden, New York University).

5. Documentary Authority and the Art of Photography (Barbara Savedoff, Baruch College).

6. Photography and Representation (Roger Scruton, Institute for the Psychological Sciences, Princeton University).

7. How Photographs 'Signify': Cartier-Bresson's 'Reply' to Scruton (David Davies, McGill University)

8. Scales of Space and Time in Photography: “Perception Points Two Ways”: (Patrick Maynard, University of Western Ontario).

9. True Appreciation (Dominic Lopes, University of British Columbia).

10. Landscape and Still Life-Static Representations of Static Scenes (Kendall Walton, University of Michigan).

11. The Problem with Movie Stars (Noël Carroll, Temple University).

12. Pictures of King Arthur: Photography and the Power of Narrative (Gregory Currie, University of Nottingham).

13. The Naked Truth (Arthur Danto, Columbia University).

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"Any adequate aesthetic theory must accommodate facts about the production, interpretation, and evaluation of photographic images. Scott Walden's valuable collection should help bring the realities and significance of photography into the philosophical mainstream; it provides rich and well-informed reflections upon epistemological, ontological, and evaluative aspects of photographic process and product." — Robert Kraut , Ohio State University

"This is a first-rate collection of essays in the philosophy of photography by the leading figures in the analytic literature. Remarkably, it is also the first such collection to appear in English, running from the classic essays by Walton and Scruton right through to current work by leading exponents such as Lopes, Maynard, and Currie. Covering a range of questions foundational to the epistemology, ontology, ethics, and aesthetics of photography, it is probably the most wide-ranging single book available on the philosophy of photography to date. As such it is a real achievement, sure to foster debate." — Diarmuid Costello , University of Warwick

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"How does one accept or deny 'reality' in photographic excursions? This is the central issue in this extraordinary compilation of 13 essays by contemporary philosophers who argue back and forth (in editor Walden's clever arrangement) so that readers must engage their own minds within the constantly conflicting (theoretical and personal) propositions/explanations. This is a rich, provocative, intelligent, challenging, and important compilation. Highly recommended." ( Choice , November 2008)

"Many of the essays are well written and indeed groundbreaking … .Given its overall depth, the anthology is worth reading by any critic, curator or student of the arts." ( Prefix Photo , 2008)

"Will enlighten the student and refresh the informed. Contributes greatly to the literature and will occupy a favorite spot on the book shelves." ( Metapsychology )

"Any adequate aesthetic theory must accommodate facts about the production, interpretation, and evaluation of photographic images. Scott Walden's valuable collection should help bring the realities and significance of photography into the philosophical mainstream; it provides rich and well-informed reflections upon epistemological, ontological, and evaluative aspects of photographic process and product." ― Robert Kraut , Ohio State University

"This is a first-rate collection of essays in the philosophy of photography by the leading figures in the analytic literature. Remarkably, it is also the first such collection to appear in English, running from the classic essays by Walton and Scruton right through to current work by leading exponents such as Lopes, Maynard, and Currie. Covering a range of questions foundational to the epistemology, ontology, ethics, and aesthetics of photography, it is probably the most wide-ranging single book available on the philosophy of photography to date. As such it is a real achievement, sure to foster debate." ― Diarmuid Costello , University of Warwick

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Unlike the numerous texts devoted to the subject of Film Theory, this collection contains essays specifically about the art form of Still Photography and the broader theoretical questions it raises. Written by contemporary philosophers in a thorough and engaging manner, it is an excellent resource for students studying aesthetics or fine arts and photography.

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"How does one accept or deny 'reality' in photographic excursions? This is the central issue in this extraordinary compilation of 13 essays by contemporary philosophers who argue back and forth (in editor Walden's clever arrangement) so that readers must engage their own minds within the constantly conflicting (theoretical and personal) propositions/explanations. This is a rich, provocative, intelligent, challenging, and important compilation. Highly recommended." ( Choice , November 2008)

"Many of the essays are well written and indeed groundbreaking … .Given its overall depth, the anthology is worth reading by any critic, curator or student of the arts." ( Prefix Photo , 2008)

"Will enlighten the student and refresh the informed. Contributes greatly to the literature and will occupy a favorite spot on the book shelves." ( Metapsychology )

"Any adequate aesthetic theory must accommodate facts about the production, interpretation, and evaluation of photographic images. Scott Walden's valuable collection should help bring the realities and significance of photography into the philosophical mainstream; it provides rich and well-informed reflections upon epistemological, ontological, and evaluative aspects of photographic process and product." ― Robert Kraut , Ohio State University

"This is a first-rate collection of essays in the philosophy of photography by the leading figures in the analytic literature. Remarkably, it is also the first such collection to appear in English, running from the classic essays by Walton and Scruton right through to current work by leading exponents such as Lopes, Maynard, and Currie. Covering a range of questions foundational to the epistemology, ontology, ethics, and aesthetics of photography, it is probably the most wide-ranging single book available on the philosophy of photography to date. As such it is a real achievement, sure to foster debate." ― Diarmuid Costello , University of Warwick

From the Back Cover

Unlike the numerous texts devoted to the subject of Film Theory, this collection contains essays specifically about the art form of Still Photography and the broader theoretical questions it raises. Written by contemporary philosophers in a thorough and engaging manner, it is an excellent resource for students studying aesthetics or fine arts and photography.

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  1. Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature

    This anthology offers a fresh approach to the philosophical aspects of photography. The essays, written by contemporary philosophers in a thorough and engaging manner, explore the far-reaching ethical dimensions of photography as it is used today. A first-of-its-kind anthology exploring the link between the art of photography and the theoretical questions it raises Written in a thorough and ...

  2. Photography and Philosophy

    Photography and Philosophy | Wiley Online Books Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature Editor (s): Scott Walden First published: 20 November 2007 Print ISBN: 9781405139243 | Online ISBN: 9780470696651 | DOI: 10.1002/9780470696651 Copyright © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Navigation Bar Menu Home Author Biography Reviews

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  5. Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature

    Scott Walden (ed.), Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature, Blackwell Publishing, 2008, 325pp., $79.95 (hbk), ISBN 9781405139243. Reviewed by John Andrew Fisher, University of Colorado at Boulder 2009.02.18 Shows devoted to photography seem to be everywhere in the art world.

  6. Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature

    Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature Scott Walden (Editor) 3.82 11 ratings1 review This anthology offers a fresh approach to the philosophical aspectsof photography. The essays, written by contemporary philosophers ina thorough and engaging manner, explore the far-reaching ethicaldimensions of photography as it is used today.

  7. Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature

    Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature edited by walden, scott. Zed Adams - 2010 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68 (3):319-320. The flat-lining of metaphysics: François Laruelle's 'science-fictive' theory of non-photography. John Roberts - 2011 - Philosophy of Photography 2 (1):129-141. Photographs as evidence.

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    WALDEN, SCOTT, ed. Photography and Philosophy:Essays on the Pencil of Nature. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008, xii + 325 pp., $79.95 cloth. We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website.By continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

  9. William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) and the Invention of Photography

    At home, he demonstrated the commercial viability of his invention by means of a photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, published in parts beginning in 1844. In less than a decade, Talbot conceived and brought about a wholly new way of making pictures, perfected the optical and chemical aspects of photography, and learned to ...

  10. Photography and Philosophy : Essays on the Pencil of Nature

    His interest in photographic theory emerges from his training in philosophy and his practice of photography. His philosophical work has been published in the British Journal of Aesthetics, and...

  11. Photography and Philosophy : Essays on the Pencil of Nature

    This anthology offers a fresh approach to the philosophical aspects of photography. The essays, written by contemporary philosophers in a thorough and engaging manner, explore the far-reaching ethical dimensions of photography as it is used today. A first-of-its-kind anthology exploring the link between the art of photography and the theoretical questions it raises Written in a thorough and ...

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  16. Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature / Edition 1

    Scott Walden's interest in photographic theory emerges from his training in philosophy and his practice of photography.His philosophical work has been published in the British Journal of Aesthetics, and his photographic work in Places Lost: In Search of Newfoundland's Resettled Communities (2003). In 2007 he was awarded the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography by the Canada Council ...

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