Kracauer's Truth

"While time is not part of the photograph like the smile or the chignon, the photograph itself, so it seems to them, is a representation of time. If it is only the photograph that endows these details with duration, it is not at all they who outlast mere time, but, rather, it is time that makes images of itself out of them." - Siegfried Kracauer

I like this quote. Recently I have indulged more than my fair share of reading material concerning interpretations of photography. Of all the readings I have done, I find this quote to be one of my favorites. Essentially, where people believe that photographs are a method of preserving oneself, Kracauer proposes the theory hat photographs are simply time capturing time. That is, Kracauer suggests that images, on the broad spectrum of time, lose the photographer's meaning if, and when, the former outlasts the latter. I agree with Kracauer to the extent that, if everyone who can identify and relate with the image as the photographer intended has ceased to exist- short of historical documentation proving otherwise- then that image no longer holds the same meaning as before. This quote serves as evidence to a previous suggestion I made: Images are subject to interpretation and, as such, can carry a plethora of meaning to be decided by the audience.

"For the first time in history, photography brings to the fore the entire natural shell; or the first time the inert world presents itself in its independence from human beings." - Siegfried Kracauer

Kracauer suggest in his essay that memory and photography, while related, should be considered independent matters. Kracauer indicated that memory was the mind's method of preserving truth, albeit by forgoing specific details and retaining only what was considered to be the heart of meaning. Conversely, Kracauer believes that photography itself was the first time the opposite was considered, or rather, photography does capture the "specific details" of an event and more, but omits the actual meaning of the event. I feel that both photography and memory work together to intensify meaning and that one must never consider them mutually exclusive.

Wall of Jack