THE CONCEPT OF "REPRESENTATION" AND THE LIMITS OF ITS APPLICATION IN THE STUDY OF PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIENCE
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2020-2-56-73
Representation is the presentation of one thing in another and through another. The purpose of the article is to consider the applicability of the principle of representation to photographic experience, the article discusses the reasons why images appear in culture. Images are not just a cast or a duplicate of an object. It is not just reproducing the forms of the already visible world, but rather producing forms that are just becoming visible in the world. After a talented draftsman, as well as a photographer, the world grows in terms of the visible. The scope of a person's communicative competence includes the task of not only learning to speak. To get used to light is to learn to see and to learn to be visible, and to use light in this sense is just as important as to use the alphabet. The mirror in culture anticipated photography. The mirror helped make the image that others wanted to see real. In the experience of perception, various activities intersect: bodily, figurative, and symbolic. The symbols are what passes between the subject of communication, they define the horizontal vector of the connection of people. Images are not necessarily involved in exchange and tend to be integral and continuous, just like sacred objects. The visual turn is not that scientists have suddenly "discovered" images for themselves and for others, and are ready to "close" the language world. The turn is the refusal to recognize the "natural" dominance of symbols in the turnover of visual images. Human sensuality was not lucky in the modern era. A person of this era was primarily expected to be able to rationally represent reality for its interpretation. If any formations other than "intelligence" were found on the human side, they had to be reduced to "non-intelligence" with ritual regrets. Emotions, feelings, and affects were identified as natural, but not cultural, entity. The article presents arguments that refute the assumptions that photography is a representative system of a language type. It is shown that judgments about "reading photos" are only metaphors, which means that the function of photography in culture is not limited to the transmission of information. Being as a visual system, photography is primarily addressed to feelings and emotions. The article considers the arguments of proponents of non-representative theory which reject interpretative methodologies. In the non-representative approach, emotions are considered as thinking. Such thinking unfolds in the categories of body (gesture) and affect, this thinking is different from verbal thinking. Thought is placed in action, and action is placed in the world, the cognitive and affective in experience are not in conflict. Representative and non-representative theories come from different styles of thinking, and the choice of this style determines the boundary of the representation principle.
Keywords: image, technogenic media, the perception of photographs, representation, non-representative approach, cognitive, affective
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Issue: 2, 2020
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: ARTICLES
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