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The Camera: Essence and Apparatus
Victor Burgin is one of the most influential artists and writers working today. He came to prominence as a key figure in the Conceptual Art of the late 1960s. After turning to photography in his artistic practice he produced a series of groundbreaking theoretical essays that drew on semiotics, psychoanalysis and feminism in order to think through the ideological role of photographs in the production of beliefs and values, and in the understanding of memory, history, subjectivity and space.
In the last decade or so, Burgin has worked with computer-generated imagery and the virtual camera. But rather than accepting a radical divide between so-called ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ realms, Burgin has emphasised the continuity of the virtual camera, the various physical cameras in use today, and the painted images of Quattrocento painting – all of which have their essence in the perspectival system of representation. Further to this, Burgin argues that no image is merely an optical experience – all images are essentially psychological events and thus virtual also. Inseparable from language, they form the psychical spaces of fantasy and projection, recognition and misrecognition. Whether on pages, walls or screens, in galleries or online, single views, or swarms of picture fragments, images are the making and unmaking of our sense of self, and the world around us.
This collection brings together for the first time Victor Burgin’s writings related specifically to the camera, following the shifts and nuances in his thinking over nearly five decades. Moreover, it allows us to chart the evolution of what the camera was and is, and how its affects are to be understood.
In the last decade or so, Burgin has worked with computer-generated imagery and the virtual camera. But rather than accepting a radical divide between so-called ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ realms, Burgin has emphasised the continuity of the virtual camera, the various physical cameras in use today, and the painted images of Quattrocento painting – all of which have their essence in the perspectival system of representation. Further to this, Burgin argues that no image is merely an optical experience – all images are essentially psychological events and thus virtual also. Inseparable from language, they form the psychical spaces of fantasy and projection, recognition and misrecognition. Whether on pages, walls or screens, in galleries or online, single views, or swarms of picture fragments, images are the making and unmaking of our sense of self, and the world around us.
This collection brings together for the first time Victor Burgin’s writings related specifically to the camera, following the shifts and nuances in his thinking over nearly five decades. Moreover, it allows us to chart the evolution of what the camera was and is, and how its affects are to be understood.
- GenresPhotography
260 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2018
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December 21, 2018
Definitely not an easy read for the most of it (dense academic writing with lots of cross references to Freud, Foucault, Barthes and the like, and a use of words outside of the daily vocabulary of most) but nonetheless a very good read that makes you think about the conscious and unconscious understanding/reading of photography and the image making process. Spanning over 4 decades, the selection of essays (all by the same writer) are a good timeline of the changes in the media landscape, the images we see and read on a daily basis and to how relate to us. I think the last paragraph of the last essay in the book describes well how Victor Burgin writes, and how this book is intended to be read;
“As a working-class child ... I can’t say I ‘understood’ everything I ... read in the books I borrowed from the library, but worlds beyond the confines of my everyday life – not least, worlds of my own imagining – were accessible to me. No one patronised me, no one condescended to provide me with books ... they thought I would ‘understand’ – after all, what does ‘understand’ mean if not a perfect match between the message emitted and the message received? This kind of understanding is for traffic signs, not art.”
“As a working-class child ... I can’t say I ‘understood’ everything I ... read in the books I borrowed from the library, but worlds beyond the confines of my everyday life – not least, worlds of my own imagining – were accessible to me. No one patronised me, no one condescended to provide me with books ... they thought I would ‘understand’ – after all, what does ‘understand’ mean if not a perfect match between the message emitted and the message received? This kind of understanding is for traffic signs, not art.”
Displaying 1 of 1 review