Time Exposure and Snapshot: The Photograph as Paradox Author(s): Thierry de Duve Source: October, Vol. 5, Photography (Summer, 1978), pp. 113-125 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778649 Accessed: 23-08-2016 13:42 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October
Time Exposure and Snapshot: The Photograph as Paradox THIERRY DE DUVE Commenting on Harold Rosenberg's Tradition of the New, once wrote, "You cannot hang an event on the wall, only a pic however, that with photography, we have indeed the paradox hangs on the wall. Photography is generally taken in either of two ways: as an eve an odd looking one, a frozen gestalt that conveys very little, if the fluency of things happening in real life; or it is taken autonomous representation that can indeed be framed and hung curiously ceases to refer to the particular event from which it w words, the photograph is seen either as natural evidence and liv of a vanished past, or as an abrupt artifact (event), a devilish capture life but unable to convey it. Both notions of what is h surface of the image have their counterpart in reality. Seen as photograph cannot fail to designate, outside of itself, the death of t accomplished past, the suspension of time. And seen as deaden photograph indicates that life outside continues, time flows by object has slipped away. As representatives of these two opposite ways in which perceived, the funerary portrait would exemplify the "pict onstage a life that has stopped offstage. The press photograph, o would exemplify the "event." It freezes onstage the course of outside. Once generalized, these examples suggest that the time of a way of perceiving the photograph as "picture-like," wher neous photograph is typical of a way of perceiving it as "even These two ways are mutually exclusive, yet they coexist in o any photograph, whether snapshot or time exposure. Moreove constitute a contradiction that we can resolve through a dialec Instead they set up a paradox, which results in an unresolved psychological responses towards the photograph.
First, let us snapshot is a t produces a petr to an impossib been performe It is clear tha photographic s the photograp some extent a device), its pro (except the cas its object. In th image is light classical post-s raphy, the ref Certainly, com common sense power over life does indeed we the sign refer Therefore we usual semiologi photograph. W located at the ju the word serie the crossing o The first seri object, abstrac call it the supe say reality-prod framed by th physical sign, referential seri We may now impossible pos animal locomot known in Fra among painter 1. In a recent art Rosalind Krauss s impact on contem see Charles S. Pei 2. See Beaumont N pp. 83-94; Van De 114 OCTOBER
Eadweard Muybridge. Galloping Horse. 1878. the unexpected, yet "true" postures that were revealed by the infallible eye of the camera, whether or not the artist--including the photographer when he strives for artistic recognition-should remain faithful to nature as recorded rather than interpret it, were the main issues under debate. Yet these aesthetic controversies are symptomatic of what was felt as an unbearable disclosure: that of the photograph's paradoxical treatment of reality in motion. The 19th century ideology of realism prescribed, among other things, the attempt to convey visual reality adequately. And to that end, photography was sensed-either reluctantly or enthusiastically--as establishing a rule. But with the onset of motion photography, artists who were immersed in the ideology of realism found themselves unable to express reality and obey the photograph's verdict at the same time. For Muybridge's snapshots of a galloping horse demonstrated what the animal's movements were, but did not convey the sensation of their motion. The artist must have felt squeezed between two incompatible truths that can be approached in terms of a contradiction in aesthetic ideology. But basically this contradiction is grounded in the paradoxical perception of photography in general, for which the example of Muybridge is simply an extreme case. The paradox of the unperformed movement and the im presents itself as an unresolved alternative. Either the photo singular event, or it makes the event form itself in the image the first alternative is that reality is not made out of singular eve of the continuous happening of things. In reality, the event is it doesn't arise from or make a gestalt: the discus thrower rele second case, where the photograph freezes the event in the for Press, 1964, pp. 156-9; Aaron Scharf, Art and Photography, Baltimore, Pe 211-227.
116 OCTOBER problem is tha a gestalt indee its temporal con windup. The referenti superficial ser or drawn imag series cross at o of this unreso the thing (or i occur in the r gallops. Or if w an image from name, the sha series, where accounting for The snapshot s as abrupt, aggr accuracy. Let us now consider the time exposure, of which the photo-portrait concrete instance. Whether of a live or dead person, the portrait is funerary nature, a monument. Acting as a reminder of times that have died away, it set landmarks of the past. This means it reverses the paradox of the snapshot, seri series. Whereas the snapshot refers to the fluency of time without conveying it, th time exposure petrifies the time of the referent and denotes it as depar Reciprocally, whereas the former freezes the superficial time of the image, latter releases it. It liberates an autonomous and recurrent temporality, whic the time of remembrance. While the portrait as Denkmal,4 monument, points state in a life that is gone forever, it also offers itself as the possibility of sta that life again and again in memory. An asymmetrical reciprocity joins the snapshot to the time exposur whereas the snapshot stole a life it could not return, the time exposure express life that it never received. The time exposure doesn't refer to life as process evolution, diachrony, as does the snapshot. It deals with an imaginary life tha autonomous, discontinuous, and reversible, because this life has no location oth than the surface of the photograph. By the same token it doesn't frame that kind o surface-death characteristic of the snapshot, which is the shock of time splitt into not anymore and not yet. It refers to death as the state of what has been: fixity and defection of time, its absolute zero. 3. Roland Barthes, "Rhetoric of the Image," Image/Music/l Text, trans. Stephen Heath, New Yor Hill and Wang, 1977, p. 44. 4. The German word Mal (which yields malen, to paint) comes from the Latin macula, stain, fro which the french maille (mesh) also derives.