Text: Jacques Derrida - Archive Fever
Photography has become a modern philosophical problem in this regard, in that photography only captures an anamorphic depiction of reality, not reality itself.
One should be careful not to fall victim to the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, who argued that reality is dead and photography is the new real. Rather, what is perceived to be real is different from what is real. Photography feeds perception, so the proliferation of photography has meant that anamorphic visions of reality have become widespread. The anamorphic conceptualization of reality is becoming more important than reality itself.
In Archive Fever (1995), Jacques Derrida proposes the notion of the ‘archontic power’ – the power of the ‘archons’, a group of people entrusted with maintaining the laws and documents in ancient Greece. He says of them:
“The archons are first of all the documents’ guardians. They do not only ensure the physical security of what is deposited and of the substrate… they have the power to interpret the archives… these documents in effect speak the law: they recall the law, and call on or impose the law.” Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, p.2 (trans. Eric Prenowitz)
In other words, those who hold the information also get to interpret it.
The information a camera deals with is the appearance of physical reality. One may be tempted to say that it is the perceiver of the photograph who interprets photographic information, but this would be too simplistic. That is to say, the viewer may interpret the photo through his or her experience of it, but this does not mean that it’s he or she who gives the photograph its meaning. The image which is to be interpreted by the viewer is itself already an interpretation, constructed partially by the photographer’s will and partially through the camera’s technical specifics. A photograph is not just the result of manipulations by the photographer, but is also conditioned by the camera itself. A camera has certain technological limitations which prevent an unmediated or undistorted relationship of the image to reality. For instance, the camera needs certain lighting; it needs to be at a certain angle; it needs to focus on an object. In short, the camera records the object it sees through its mechanical nature, and the image which results is therefore not reality, but reality as seen through the camera. In and of themselves, these technical limitations have little importance: but the photographer must be mindful of them, and she is forced to use the camera in such a way that she can overcome or utilize these limitations. This further distorts what the camera records.
It should be noted that the limitations of photography often become intentional aspects of photographs, as the photographer uses these limitations to interpret reality as she desires – by making an object appear out of focus, or by taking a picture of a thing in insufficient lighting so that it appears darker than it is, or through Photoshop or similar airbrushing. She can make the camera record an object in such a way as to make that object perceive itself in a certain way, when that object is human. Distortions or limitations to our perception of reality further occur through what the photographer chooses as important to photograph, and so important for us to perceive.
It would be wrong to suggest that either the camera or the photographer was the ‘archon’ – the thing which asserts the meaning of the photograph. Instead, both the photographer and the camera mutually distort reality’s visual information: together they form the archon. The photo, which is the result of mechanical alterations of the real visual information, I shall refer to as having only anamorphic reality. This means the reality photographed only exists in a certain context: only when viewed from this angle, in this light, etc. Yet photography has the ability to seduce its viewer because it is anamorphic. It is something new, exciting, a variation on a familiar subject, so the images are desirable, and capture the viewer’s imagination. This is the case for both repulsive and seductive images.
Reference:
https://mattrandledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/warning_philosophy-now1.pdf