Week 2: Workshop + Practical Session

In this week's workshop, Michael suggested that we read and make notes on McLuhan's chapter on Photography from the book Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. Here are the notes I made on the chapter as well as the discussion we had as a class.

Reading:
Marshall McLuhan (1994) 'The Photograph: the Brothel-without-Walls' in Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, London & New York. The MIT Press; Reprint edition

Marshall McLuhan is an important media theorist who wrote 'Understanding Media', which was influential in the 60s and 70s.
"we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us
"the medium is the message"
"global village"

One might say: "text messaging changes how apples taste."

The word 'camera' comes from the latin word meaning 'room'.

Mediums are extensions of the human body.

Nobody can commit photography alone. It is possible to have at least the illusion of reading and writing in isolation, but photography does not foster such attitudes. If there is any sense in deploring the growth of corporate and collective art forms such as the film and the press, it is surely in relation to the previous individualist technologies that these new forms corrode.

To say that "the camera cannot lie" is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practiced in its name. Indeed, the world of the movie that was prepared by the photograph has become synonymous with illusion and fantasy, turning society into what Joyce called an "all nights newsery reel," that substitutes a "reel" world for reality. Joyce knew more about the effects of the photograph on our senses, our language, and our thought processes than anybody else. His verdict on the "automatic writing" that is photography was the abnihilization of the etym. He saw the photo as at least a rival, and perhaps a usurper, of the word, whether written or spoken.

The technology of the photo is an extension of our own being and can be withdrawn from circulation like any other technology if we decide that it is virulent. But amputation of such extensions of our physical being calls for as much knowledge and skill as are prerequisite to any other physical amputation.

Perhaps the great revolution produced by photograph was in the traditional arts. The painter could no longer depict a world that had been much photographed. He turned, instead, to reveal the inner process of creativity in expressionism and in abstract art. Likewise, the novelist could no longer describe objects or happenings for readers who already knew what was happening by photo, press, film, and radio.

The Photograph
- To 'commit photography'
- Woodcuts, engraving, prints
- The dots get smaller (pointillism, MOC cool media to hot)
- Visual reports without syntax
- Comparisons with Gutenberg
- A break with Mechanical Industrialism to Graphic Age
- Morse (telegraph to photograph)
- The pinhole camera

Photographs almost become meaningless, they numb the origins of the subject that is being photographed. 

Art photography is a minority pursuit in this day and age.