(Untitled)

[birchswinger3]

Siegfried (however the hell you spell that) Kracauer discussed the photographic portrait as a collection of all the transient, incidental, non-essential details of a person. Most salient in the picture are the antiquated fashions, the long gloves, the absurd hairstyles. You see your grandmother not as you knew her, but free of wrinkles, virtually

Comments

[followbliss]

(probably taking Kracauer on too personal a level, but so it goes) - how is the essence of a person being defined? photos of my grandmother thirty or fifty or sixty, to take one example, do better at capturing what one might call her 'essence', despite the fact that they do not represent her as I knew her. Perhaps because they do not represent her as I knew her: you're only trading one lens or one angle of perception for another, at any rate, and I what I view(ed) as meaningful about her would likely be as transient, incidental, and non-essential (according to her, or according to someone else who knew her) as what is in a given photograph. Perhaps I'm missing the mark, here.

My journal is pretty much as quotidian and incidental as the real thing, I must admit:) I was going to write that it isn't really a constructed self, either, but then what about a person isn't a constructed self? Online journals just tend to be constructed more nicely than people can stand to do on a daily basis. And if people are posting non-incidentals, then they a) do not post very often, or b) are presenting the incidental in an overblown kind of way or c) far more interesting than I. Probably a combination therein.

[birchswinger3]

hmm... i think as far as the kracauer bit goes, he does not mean to say that a current photo of the grandmother would do any more justice to the grandmother's essence (a ridiculously hard-to-get-at notion... i'm not sure exactly how he, or anybody else, means it) than the older photographs. i think he wants to communicate, rather, that no particular snapshot of material or temporal specifics can aptly capture the essential, and rather merely capture a facet of effluvium of that essence, as you've said.

i think what he may imply is that one photograph--one snapshot of specifics--is not enough to get at the essential. instead, it either needs to be viewed as a part of a spectrum or whole collection of photographs in order to find in that the shared qualities that are not merely incidental and from there construe a coherent understanding of the grandmother's nature; or that the photograph falls short and is not an appropriate medium in which to capture this nature.

i agree that incidentals are kind of all we have to work with here in journals, and that all your objections with people who attempt otherwise are good ones. i was trying to convince myself that, though i may offer only details/specifis of my life in a journal, it is still somehow worthwhile. i gave up though and didn't get far enough in the convincing myself (or others) department, but merely looked at kracauer's counterargument... peh. something for another day. also, you guys have all provided good observations and reasons, so that they've still been brought to the table even though i fizzled out and stopped the entry before coming up with any.
sweet.
:)

[followbliss]

okay, if his argument is that it is the fact that it is a single photograph (not because it is a photograph /in the past/) that has the shortcoming, then that's fine by me. I was just having trouble with the past vs. present distinction, I suppose.

and you should absolutely post again. there is my assessment of the situation. you won't be at swat this, summer, will you? out of rather random curiosity-

[birchswinger3]

no :/
i'll be in nyc, though, so i might get inspired and make the trek down for a weekend sometime. also, i'm thinking of coming back june 1st for graduation. what will you be doing this summer?

[followbliss]

twill be at swat for June doing linguistics things, then in Albuquerque at the Navajo language academy doing things, and then back at swat momentarily in August. you should visit! when do you leave for India?