POP 1 (1) pp.

18–21 Intellect Limited 2010

Philosophy of Photography
Volume 1 Number 1
© 2010 Intellect Ltd Symposium. English language. doi: 10.1386/pop.1.1.18/7

DAVID CAMPANY
University of Westminster

Drink the wine, discard the bottle,

then drink something else

A couple of years ago I was at a seminar that was intended to bring together ‘theorists of photogra-
phy’ and ‘philosophers’ to see what would happen. With such a crude distinction being made in the
first place I think the organizers secretly knew the outcome. By ‘secretly’ I do not mean they kept it
from the participants so much as they kept from admitting it to themselves. The theorists of photog-
raphy assessed what the philosophers might be interested in and vice versa, and each side tailored its
presentations to the other. These were not really ‘sides taken’ so much as hats temporarily assumed
for the day (I do not know anyone who is not, on some level, a theorist of photography or a philoso-
pher). To nobody’s surprise the meeting ground was the perennial hot potato that is the definition,
or essence or ontology of photography. Or maybe it’s a cold potato, depending on whether you think
the topic is worth pursuing beyond the fairly well established positions that either the matter is
decided and closed, or is open permanently because the ‘object’ is a moving target.
And here we have a journal titled Philosophy of Photography. Photography is being conceived as
the object of philosophical reflection or inquiry. Not that the term or discipline ‘philosophy’ is any
less contested than ‘photography’. Nevertheless to quote the card the editors of the journal sent me

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 Drink the wine, discard the bottle, then drink something else

in September of 2009, its remit is to ‘provide a forum for debate of issues arising from the cultural,
political, historical and scientific matrix of ideas, practices and techniques that constitute contempo-
rary photography.’ Although this is necessarily vague (as any project must be to accrue funding and
institutional support these days) it is helpful in a roundabout way. It gives a sense of how the editors
do plan to conceive of both philosophy and photography: culture, politics, history, science, ideas,
practices and techniques. Photography has now had at least three decades of very serious attention
from some of the most advanced minds of our time, who have understood and approached it as
something that is profoundly shaped by and able to shape our understanding of culture, politics, his-
tory, science, ideas, practices and techniques. So is this business as usual, or is there a, or many,
philosophies of photography?
It is certainly true that a number of people, who would consider themselves as belonging to the
discipline of philosophy, have, in recent years, become interested in photography. And on this basis
what they do with this interest is more likely than not to be called a ‘philosophy of photography’.
However, whether what they are actually doing is something other than participating in the ‘debate
of issues arising from the cultural, political, historical and scientific matrix of ideas, practices and
techniques that constitute photography’ is another matter. In a recent and fascinating article Diarmuid
Costello and Dawn M. Phillips (from the department of philosophy at the University of Warwick) tell
us the philosophy of photography is a ‘relatively untrammelled field’ but what they then ‘trammel’ it
with is a series of astute reflections of photography’s relation to automatism, causality and realism,
picking up where the existing debates that have not bothered with the title ‘philosophy’ have left off
(Costello and Phillips 2009). If photography’s relation to automatism, causality and realism interests
you, you’ll be interested in this article. If you were wondering what on earth a philosophy of photog-
raphy could be you might also be interested, and you would learn that it’s not so different from the
wider and ongoing discussions. That might be a disappointment or a nice surprise.
Any new journal will want to make the case that its time has come. So why might a philosophy
of photography seem particularly pressing? Two asymmetrical yet connected answers suggest
themselves. The first follows a line of thought we can see in the diagnoses of Rosalind Krauss and
Michael Fried, to name only the most obvious (Krauss 1998; Fried 2008). Over the last three dec-
ades or so photography has been displaced from the centre of visual culture and dissolved in its
specificity through the demise of the illustrated press, the rise of television and the electronic con-
vergence of media. This period corresponds with photography’s new availability to, and triumph
in, art. In its eclipse, photography becomes a theoretical object that comes to ‘matter as art as
never before’ – to paraphrase the title of the book by Fried (which, as many critics soon pointed
out, is persuasive, but not in its mobilization of the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Heidegger).
The core argument is that photography became so central to art only once it became thinkable, and
it only became thinkable once it did not occupy the centre of visual experience: once it was no

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 David Campany

longer the defining medium of the day; once its burden as primary chronicle and document was
lifted. Krauss calls this ‘obsolescence’ but that seems hasty because clearly there is still plenty of
photography around. The model ‘T’ Ford is obsolete: photography is not. Let’s stick with ‘eclipse’.
Photography, its practitioners, its theorists and its philosophers are making sense, are perhaps only
able to make sense, of photography in this eclipse. One does not have to go for either of the very
different and narrow canons of photographic art defended by Fried and Krauss to entertain this
general assessment.
However, this journal’s remit mentions neither art nor aesthetics specifically and this points us to
a second sense in which a philosophy of photography might seem attractive. That eclipse affects not
just art; it affects all existing photographic practices and our relations to them. While it’s true that art
has become the privileged space for the discussion of photography, its terms are inevitably narrow
and often debilitating. A few years ago I suggested that:

… art has become the space to look askew at the general field of the photographic, to engage
directly or indirectly with a commentary upon the image world at large. The space of art has
thus come to function either as a dissecting table to which the different forms of the social
photographic are brought for creative reflection, or as a set upon which they can be can be
reworked. These two metaphors – dissecting table and set – map quite well onto what seem
to be the two key impulses behind much current photographic art: the forensic interest in
detail and the cinematic interest in mise-en-scène or staging. These impulses are so forcefully
present today because all photography in art is somehow obliged to enter into a dialogue
either with the notion of the photo as visual evidence or with the culture of the moving image
in which the still now finds itself. Or both.
(Campany 2004)

However, to observe documentary practice (for example) only through its current guises in and as art
is rather like studying a tiger in a zoo: it acts differently and so do its observers. It needs to be studied
in the wild too, however depleted the habitat. The same can be said for all those photographic prac-
tices that are not art (which, conservatively estimated, is about 99.945 per cent of them).
So far what has gone on under the banner ‘philosophy of photography’ has been a continua-
tion of the debates about medium specificity and the ontology of the photographic image and/or
reflection on photography in/as art. Although this may be familiar wine in new bottles, there is
every reason to continue drinking it. Those issues will not go away any time soon. So let’s not for-
get that it is the wine that matters, even in these label-obsessed times. If I am pleased that the
Philosophy of Photography understands its task is to ‘provide a forum for debate of issues arising
from the cultural, political, historical and scientific matrix of ideas, practices and techniques that

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 Drink the wine, discard the bottle, then drink something else

constitute photography’, it’s because, in principle, it covers everything photographic. In practice,

we will have to wait and see.

References
Campany, David (2004), ‘On Thinking and not Thinking Photography’, Engage, 14.
Costello, Diarmuid and Phillips, M. Dawn (2009), ‘Automatism, Causality and Realism: Foundational
Problems in the Philosophy of Photography’, Philosophy Compass, 4:1, pp. 1–21.
Fried, Michael (2008), Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, London: Yale University
Press.
Krauss, Rosalind E. (1998), ‘Reinventing “Photography”’, in Luminita Sabau (ed.), The Promise of
Photography, London: Prestel.

Suggested citation
Campany, D. (2010), ‘Drink the wine, discard the bottle, then drink something else’, Philosophy of
Photography 1: 1, pp. 18–21, doi: 10.1386/pop.1.1.18/7

Contributor details
David Campany teaches at the University of Westminster, where he is a Reader in Photography. He
writes and curates extensively. His books include Art and Photography (Phaidon Press, 2003) and
Photography and Cinema (Reaktion Books, 2008). His essays have appeared in The Oxford Art Journal,
Frieze, Source, Papel Alpha, Photoworks, AA Files, Tate Magazine, Art Review, EXTRA, FOAM,
Ojodepez and Aperture. He is Co-editor of PA magazine.
Contact: David Campany, University of Westminster, Media Art and Design, Watford Road, London
HA1 3TP, UK.

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