Wyniki wyszukiwania - Biblioteka Nauki

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„Close reading” fotografii reporterskiej: Nick Ut, „Groza wojny”

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Czekalski S.

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2023

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tom 85

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nr 4

83-98

EN

The essay brings an exhaustive analysis of the semantically productive features discernible in the visual structure of the photograph The Terror of War, taken by Nick Ut near the mistakenly napalm-bombed town of Trảng Bàng. The unique nature of the famous photograph lies in the fact that, despite circumstances that were extremely restrictive in terms of the timing, perspective and composition of the frame, by a sheer stroke of luck it proved possible to capture on film an image that is extremely meaningful and semantically loaded. The semantics of the image was determined by the author by comparing this image and the original frame with a photograph of the same situation taken by Ut a moment later, as well as, above all, through a detailed analysis of the image’s structure. This structure reveals the essential characteristics of the language of narrative images, which constitute the close dependence of semantics on the rigour of composition as syntax. Through them, the photograph acquires a highly expressive iconic character, not only in the sense that it has become a kind of an “icon” perpetuating the image of a specific event in collective consciousness and historical memory, but above all in the sense defined by Max Imdahl’s conception of the iconics.

PL

Artykuł przynosi wnikliwą analizę produktywnych semantycznie cech struktury wizualnej fotografii Groza wojny, którą wykonał Nick Ut pod miejscowością Trảng Bàng omyłkowo zaatakowaną napalmem. Wyjątkowy charakter słynnego zdjęcia polega na tym, że mimo okoliczności skrajnie zawężających pole wyboru w zakresie momentu jego wykonania, perspektywy i kompozycji kadru, szczęśliwym trafem udało się zarejestrować na kliszy obraz nadzwyczaj wymowny i nośny znaczeniowo. Określeniu jego semantyki służą porównania z oryginalnym, nieprzyciętym kadrem, ze zdjęciem tej samej sytuacji, które Ut wykonał moment później, a przede wszystkim szczegółowa analiza struktury obrazu. Ukazuje ona istotne cechy charakterystyczne dla języka obrazów narracyjnych, konstytuujące ścisłą zależność semantyki od rygoru kompozycji jako syntaksy. Za ich sprawą zdjęcie zyskuje niezwykle wyrazisty charakter ikoniczny nie tylko w tym sensie, że stało się rodzajem „ikony” utrwalającej obraz konkretnego epizodu wojny w zbiorowej świadomości i historycznej pamięci, ale przede wszystkim ikoniczny w znaczeniu, które określiła koncepcja ikoniki Maxa Imdahla.

2

Talbotowski paradygmat wizualności fotografii

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Czekalski S.

Artium Quaestiones

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2017

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nr 28

5-32

PL

The concept of visuality proposed by Norman Bryson, which refers to conscious perception determined by a system of concepts and knowledge of the visible, is related in the paper to the relationship between two kinds and ideas of photography, introduced respectively by Louis J. Daguerre and William H. Fox Talbot. The discourse about daguerrotypy stresses the quasi-telescopic properties of the picture whose visually ungraspable surface triggers an effect of reaching with the eye far beyond it toward even the farthest details, invisible without a looking glass but still clearly visible in the picture. In response to this feature, Talbot connected the photographic picture primarily with the effects of transferring the relations of shadow and light to contrast on the surface of photosensitive paper. He referred the “photogenic drawing” to a tradition older than the Albertian paradigm of the illusion of perspective adopted by Daguerre in his famous views of the streets of Paris from the window. His technique, called “skiagraphy,” Talbot associated with an ancient legend about the origin of drawing as the art of fixing shadows on a flat surface. His photographs of Lacock Abbey windows were a paradigmatic example that determined the understanding of each photo on the level of its basic self-reflexive content: in the first place, the photographic picture shows how reality before the camera lens projects its “skiagraphic” drawing – a “stamp,” as it were – on the paper surface, and how the forms of objects are reduced to that surface and grasped on it. In his Pencil of Nature, Talbot connected photographic pictures with text, determining the visual status of print photography as replica – both repetition of the highly appreciated daguerrotypy, and a rival response to it, showing the advantages of Calotypy based on the visible proximity of the picture and the surface. Thanks to the properties of Calotypy, precise “fixing of shadows” allows one to arrest despite the flow of time and fix in a visual structure what is the most volatile and changeable.

3

Historia sztuki w polu metodologii. Aktualne problemy i wyzwania

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Czekalski S.

Artium Quaestiones

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2023

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nr 34

293-336

EN

At the end of the 20th century, the theory of art history shifted from the area of methodology understood as a normative field of the philosophy of science to the area of the social practice of constructing knowledge. The term “art historical methodology” itself became trivialized when its meaning was detached from the horizon of epistemology and became extremely inclusive, encompassing all methods practised in the discipline, with a method being considered to be the use of any theory as a tool of interpretation. As a consequence, the basic problem of scientific methodology, which is the critical assessment of explanatory and interpretive theories due to the value of their justification, is not addressed in the self-reflection of contemporary art history. The retreat from the rigors of methodology was related to the reception of structuralism, initiated by Ernst Gombrich in the book Art and Illusion. Popper’s model of situational logic as a method of historical explanation of works of art was transformed into a structuralist model, referring to constant rules of pictorial representation, symbolization and communication. Michael Fried and Norman Bryson formulated their own theories of invariant rules defining the necessary initial conditions for the formation and reception of pictures, so that individual works could be interpreted in terms of these rules and, as a result, confirm the general theory, which created a vicious circle. Structuralist theories did not function as hypotheses requiring critical testing, but as interpretive codes that served to read each work of art within their own conceptual system. The next step in the process of the reception of structuralism was the development of theories defining general rules that would govern the discursive practice of art history, and the detection of which at the basis of this practice would discredit or invalidate its epistemological dimension. Hayden White’s narrativism was the theory that historical discourse is subject to narrative conventions, not to the laws of logic and the rigors of methodology that serve to limit the pool of alternative explanations or interpretations. This theory was intended to justify the pluralism of equal versions of history as a politically correct idea, appropriate for a “democratic” model of knowledge. Theorists developing White’s theses in the field of art history claimed that the discursive practice of this discipline was not governed by methodological rules but by political motivations (Keith Moxey) or aesthetic principles of artwriting (David Carrier). After the phase of open denial of the dependence of the art history discourse on methodology, the theory of the discipline turned into an analysis of techniques for building this discourse, which no longer included methodological issues, as in James Elkins’ book Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts. A critical review of theories separating art history from methodology leads to the conclusion that they are untenable. It is impossible to maintain the scientific status of our discipline without respecting the principles of methodology founded in the contemporary philosophy of science.

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Logika paradoksu. Droga krytycznego racjonalizmu w metodologii historii sztuki

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Czekalski S.

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2022

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nr 47

39-63

EN

The paper presents the mainstream methodological reflection in the field of art history, shaped by the reception of Karl Popper’s philosophy of critical rationalism from the 1940s to the 1980s. A key role in this process was played by various attempts to respond to the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation. Referring to Popper’s ideas, Gombrich developed the project of deductive iconology, associated with the conventionalist approach to the principles of image representation and communication. In dialogue with Gombrich’s views, alternative and mutually contradictory versions of the adaptation of the DN model for the methodological explanation of images were put forward by Oskar Bätschmann and Michael Baxandall. Michael Fried and Norman Bryson proposed opposing versions of viewing the image as a form of response to the objective and fundamentally fixed initial conditions of contact with the viewer. The divergence and incommensurability of the methods of art history facing Popper’s methodology revealed the inherent paradox of the notion of fact, on the one hand treated realistically and opposed to theories, and on the other depending on the interpretive perspective and theoretical assumptions.