Photographic Error Manifestation

In her paper Facts and Photographs: Visualizing the Invisible with Spirit and Thought Photography Margarida Medeiros says:

“The photographic error, the nightmare of the pioneers (the flou, the blurred, the excessive grain, the lack of contrast) seems to have found, in the last decade and turn of the century, another purpose: that of an hyper-naturalist representation and an epistemic support for new types of knowledge. Just as X-Ray images are scientific and can be vague and blurred, so were fluidic images.”

When considering the photographic error, it is on some level viewed as a presence, because it takes on a physical form in the visual plain. It could be an unexpected light, natural or unnatural, a distorted chemical effect or, as in her paper, Medeiros talks about the potential of a spiritual presence.

This concept of a spiritual or materialised thought is interesting although far from the reality for me. But you can understand how this could have been perceived in the past. To actually have something manifest itself in the photograph triggers a curiosity that could be argued is deeply rooted in human nature. Identifying the unknown was once key to survival and now that many things have been explained this appearance of the effected photograph is engaging. We can suppose what happened and then might actually not know how it has. Why not project some meaning upon this?

It also reflects a growing interest in science. Many will assign the photographic error to process and how this went wrong. But yet the result may be aesthetically pleasing and trigger a desire to know how the science actually works.

Photographic error also allows us to categorise the resulting photograph. Whereas it once would be discarded people are now more willing to engage with the actual result as something to preserve, a one off, the result of an experiment or a work of art. The physically creation of this unexpected happenings will never be recreated and can lead to insight on the rare occasion.

It could be argued that because the visual world is now saturated with photographic image that these errors are more common but yet still vastly outnumbered, the ratio the same but the numbers far greater. The error has more context and potentially more of a role in the canon of photographic archiving and as humanity’s knowledge of photographic method increases potentially different types of error will be generated and increase this range of errors.

Bibliography

M. Medeiros. Facts and Photographs: Visualizing the Invisible with Spirit and Thought Photography, 2015, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Also inspired by the project 'In pursuit of Error' by Tracy Piper-Wright. The project has been running since 2014 and has already amassed an archive of error which can be viewed here:  https://inpursuitoferror.co.uk/

Gerhard Richter on the Meaning of the Photograph in his Painting

When considering the use of photography as a means of gathering imagery for painting in 1993 Gerhard Richter talks to Hans-Ulrich Obrist and describes how he views the use of photography is becoming a kind of sketch.

 
"In the past, painters went out into the open air and scratched. We take snaps."  

For Richter this association with the word 'snaps' relates the use of the photography to the every day. He adds value to the experience, or sensation captured in the picture because it's important to the person who took it in the first place. When Richter is quoted as calling photographs and their function as being cult objects he comments:
 

Gerhard Richter, “Reisebüro” (1966)

"The legitimate pictures are the photographs – the devotional pictures that people hang up in their homes. We then sometimes use them for art, and that may well be illegitimate." Page 259

He is saying here that the strength of the photograph is more the actual reason for hanging it not necessarily the appropriation for his needs. He is placing importance upon the reason for its existence in the first place.
 
When questioned further about the use of photography in his painting Richter takes a defensive stance and says;

"Many critics thought that my art was a critique of contemporary life: criticising it for being cut off from direct experience. But that was never what I meant."

What did Richter mean by this? His photo-paintings, that span decades, show images of his family and film stills, the surfaces sometimes being blurred, the faces indistinguishable or otherworldly. Yet they are deeply personal the details that are hidden by a gesture or the position of, say, his daughter turning away from the camera seem to imply a very personal experience that the viewer will never truly understand. We are looking into a world that belongs to the artist and are trying to glean as much information that is possible.  We will never know that true sensation that first initiated the

photo from which the painting was constructed.
 
The atmosphere that Richter draws upon are his own sensations, his experiences and on many levels this is why the appropriation of photography when used as a source material for painting relying so heavily upon the artists initial response to this secondary source.

BORCHARDT-HUME, A. (2011) Gerhard Richter: Panorama: A Retrospective; Tate, England

OBRIST, H. (ed) (1995) Gerhard Richter The Daily Practice of Painting Writings 1962-1993; Thames and Hudson, Great Britain