Chris Bailes
Thought Paper
Selected Thoughts on Cadava’s Words of Light
In Eduardo CadavaÂ’s
Words of Light:Â Theses on the Photography of History Cadava presents a collection of theses that attempt to make
sense of the nature of photography and the photograph as it relates to
capturing a historical moment. He
considers BenjaminÂ’s thoughts written during the height of Nazi power on the
revolutionary potential that photographs have when used by fascist regimes to
portray a historical model as if to apotheosize the object in the image. Photographs lend themselves well to
influencing social and political forces which in turn initiate a new thinking
and reassessing of values, particularly aesthetic values such as “creativity
and genius, eternal value and mystery…” (4).Â
The photograph has the power to define history and this power must be
wielded with responsibility; and one must not neglect his duty to think or else
they may become the puppet of a regime, explains Cadava
(4).Â
Cadava, further echoing Benjamin,
addresses the necessity for the existence of an image as the first and
fundamental material of all philosophy.Â
He explains that God first gave Adam photography and thereby the ability
to acquire knowledge. Thenceforth,
humankind has had the ability to perceive and philosophize through the use of
reflection, and speculation which strives for, and can result in, lucidity(5). This is
a view that was popularized by LockeÂ’s postulation of a tabula
Cadava continues by suggesting that the
photograph mortifies the moment in which it is taken and is thus also a
mortification of the image which it captures.Â
The photograph creates a separation between the moment in which the
photograph is viewed and the moment in which the photograph was taken. By viewing the image on paper our absence is
implied and “it allows us to speak of our death before our death” (8). By having ourselves photographed we become
objects to be viewed and no longer subjects that are viewing, in regards to the
photograph. Thus we get a glimpse of our
own death and legacy since this is how we will be experienced by others upon
our departure.  Â
Similarly, history requires
something in the present to fade into the past, i.e. die, and in the process
leave traces of itself that continue to live on as images or thoughts. Thus in this sense photographs give us
history; moreover, they can give us nothing other than history since after the
moment a photograph is taken a new moment arises and the old one is now ‘dead’
or passing away (128). Â
As a point of further consideration
it might be interesting to discuss the apparent contradiction between CadavaÂ’s (or BenjaminÂ’s) Lockean
claim that light, or perception, is the beginning of knowledge and philosophy
and BergsonÂ’s claim that perception doesnÂ’t belong in
the realm of knowledge. Can these two
views be reconciled or do they represent two opposing schools of thought? Furthermore, to what extent can a perception
or photograph reach at a reality? Can a
historical photograph have any claim representing this reality?Â
Anne Fritz
Position Paper
Eduardo Cadava, excerpts from Words of Light
Cadava writes, “there has never been a
time without the photograph, without the residue and writing of light”(5). The physical
process of activation-by-light that is photography is taken as light-shining
and absorption;Â light
has always been transmitted; only fix as a stabilizer has been missing at
points. Cadava
draws us to a parallel within Bergson between the
eyes of a human perceiver and a camera. Â
He states,“that there
is a duration to perception means that the eye is both open and
closed”(95). The closing of opened eyes
allows for the creation of an afterimage;Â this afterimage clarifies for Cadava the nature of perception in the face of technical
reproducibility.
For Bergson, perception and memory
are knotted into what may as well be an indistinguishable lump;Â photographs cannot
reproduce the past because perception and memory do not separate out(96). According to Bergson,
“there is for us nothing that is instantaneous.Â
In all that goes by that name there is already some work of our memory”(95). Counter to the
belief that perceiving equals knowing, Bergson
envisions perception instead as a magnet of “memory -[images]”96; Bergson’s
“memory-[images]” actually take on the active role of inserting themselves into
any perceptions they are able to interpret.Â
Neither memory nor perception may be experienced in pure form(96); photographs, as “snapshots of perception” may thus
“trace…their relation to the past” but cannot offer the past to their
viewers.Â
This inability to fully offer is referenced by Cadava when he writes, “…in the experience of the
photograph, it is as if we cannot see a thing.Â
In the twilight zone between seeing and not seeing, we fail to get the
picture”(7).  For Benjamin, this twilight zone is a “fog”(5) which “serves as an obstacle to both knowledge and
vision”(5). Simultaneously, we are
granted by Benjamin’s photograph the opportunity to experience death. Photographs objectify their subjects; we realize through
photographs the very reality of our eventual deaths, with the images themselves
serving as remembered future mournings(8). “Photographs bring death to the photographed”(10).Â
Photography, as representative of technical reproducibility,
does not merely alter our relationship to death, but transforms its recipients
into recorders which are eventually transformed, through this very recording
process, into a “reproduced mass”(49). Mass movements for Benjamin originate from the same
mechanisms of technological reproduction as provide us with films and
photographs; a mass sees itself through technological reproduction as if in a
mirror, yet remains faceless(56).Â
Where light has always been transmitted, its playing back in
the form of photograph “interrupts history and opens up another possibility of
history, one that spaces time and temporarlizes space”(61). Photography’s
establishment of time as temporal actually allows for the beginning of history
itself, the very history which then witnesses the appearance of the image(63). Because
photographs speak as death itself, they are simultaneously alive and dead and
thus offer an inhabitable gap. Cadava quotes Benjamin to state “living means leaving
traces”. What are these traces that are
left?