Shot in the Dark
Notes on Photography, Causality, and Content
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10691719 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mikael Pettersson (0000-0003-3666-0396, Stockholm University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 249 |
| Pages | 759-776 |
| Publication date | 2012-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2012.00073.x |
| OpenAlex | W2002693716 |
| Language | EN |
Photography is often said to be an essentially causal medium. This paper addresses the role of causality in photography and argues for three main claims: (i) a causal theory of photography does not force us to say that images of backlit objects are photographs of the back surfaces of the said objects (as Roy Sorensen would have it); rather, (ii), such images, I suggest, are photographs of the objects and what Alva Noë would call their ‘looks’; (iii) the notion of ‘looks’ furnishes us with a way to move closer to an answer to the question of the appropriate causal relation in photography
Art · Art history · Causality (physics) · Content (measure theory) · Photography · Physics · Shot (pellet) · Visual arts · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · History · Mathematics · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |