Chelsea Hubbard

�Photography” by Kracauer

In “Photography,” Kracauer reconstructs the current dilemma that modern photography has created. Photographs, while informing present society about itself through images, have caused society to be ignorant of truth—that a society which consumes these crystallized moments in time because it fears death can only contribute to the process of self-annihilation and consequent loss of latent meaning and truth contained therein.

To explain in what ways photography potentially contributes to a destruction of meaning, Kracauer differentiates it from memory. Memory and memory images are explained as having personal significance to the bearer of that memory. Memory stands as a fragmented representation of the past; its composition and organization are determined by myriad reasons and factors so that it becomes something highly subjective as it offers truth as the individual remembering perceives it. Kracauer distinguishes that memory, due this subjective nature, is able to tap into truth only available to the liberated consciousness (51). Encompassing these personal truths, the memory and memory images become unforgettable because of their personal and fragmental nature which cannot be reduced to terms of time and space.

In contrast, photographs are likenesses of objects, people, and landscapes that present a spatial continuum. Kracauer explains that they fail to capture anything but a specific viewpoint at a specific time. Pictures are thus cannot capture meaning and truth in a way similar to memory because without explanation as to what it depicts, a photograph’s meaning can be lost in time. It is forgettable because the picture does not intrinsically capture what we recognize as significant truth content. Instead, the person looking at the photograph must read the meaning of the picture through its dissection, understanding it through its detail.

Kracauer sees the present prevalent influence and popularity of photography as an “attempt to banish [the] recollection of death, which is par and parcel of every memory image” (59). Trying to eternalize our presence in time, we amass pictures as an inventory of our existence. However, photography denies success in this attempt to chronicle our lives because it creates “a society that has fallen prey to a mute nature which has no meaning” (61). Photographs cannot reveal truth in the sense that memory can, and for this reason, photography cannot render the truth or the “history” of the individual in the image, but only “the sum of what can be subtracted from him or her. The photograph annihilates the person by portraying him or her…” (57).

Seeing photography as a newer stage of capitalist production with such an esteemed position within his society, it is Kracauer’s intent to make his audience aware of this confrontation between the truth of memory and representational reproduction—a confrontation threatening to capture his society in a wealth of photographs that will contain no meaning, truth, or pertinence of the individual or of his existence.

Questions:

-How does Kracauer define historicist thinking? How does it relate to film and photography?

-In what ways do photographs and reproduction contribute to this negation of meaning today? How does this process relate to our discussions of aura?

-How do the views of Kracauer and Benjamin on photography and film’s potential differ?

-Has the production and consumption of photographs changed since Kracauer’s analysis? If so, how and when did these changes occur? What has remained the same?