TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Combination Games

The Photographic Universe

As inhabitants of the photographic universe we have become accustomed to photographs: They have grown familiar to us. We no longer take any notice of most photographs, concealed as they are by habit; in the same way, we ignore everything familiar in our environment and only notice what has changed. Change is informative, the familiar redundant. What we are surrounded by above all are redundant photographs - and this is the case despite the fact that every day new illustrated newspapers appear on our breakfast tables, every week new posters appear on city walls and new advertising photographs appear in shop displays. It is precisely this permanently changing situation that we have become accustomed to: One redundant photograph displaces another redundant photograph. As such, the changing situation is familiar, redundant; 'progress' has become uninformative, run-of-the-mill. What would be informative, exceptional, exciting for us would be a standstill situation: to find the same newspapers on our breakfast tables every day or to see the same posters on city walls for months on end. That would surprise and shock us. Photographs permanently displacing one another according to a program are redundant precisely because they are always 'new', precisely because they automatically exhaust the possibilities of the photographic program.

In accordance with its deeper structure, the photographic universe is grainy; it changes its appearance and colour as a mosaic might change in which the individual little pieces are continually being replaced. The photographic universe is made up of such little pieces, made up of quanta, and is calculable (calculus = little piece or 'particle') - an atomized, democratic universe, a jigsaw puzzle. An examination of the photographic universe allows us to see the deeper reason for the grainy character of all aspects of photography. It reveals, for example, that the atomized, punctuated structure is characteristic of all things relating to apparatus, and that even those camera functions that appear to slide (e.g. film and television pictures) are actually based on punctuated structures. In the world of apparatus, all 'waves' are made up of grains, and all 'processes' are made up of punctuated situations. This is because apparatuses are simulations of thought, playthings that play at 'thinking', and they simulate human thought processes. They are omniscient and omnipotent in their universes. For in these universes, a concept, an element of the program of the apparatus, is actually assigned to every point, every element of the universe. This can be seen most clearly in the case of computers and their universes. But it can also be seen in the case of the photographic universe. To every photograph there corresponds a clear and distinct element in the camera program. Every photograph thereby corresponds to a specific combination of elements in programs. Thanks to this bi-univocal relationship between universe and program, in which a photograph corresponds to every point in the program and a point in the program to every photograph, cameras are omniscient and omnipotent in the photographic universe: Cameras know everything and are able to do everything in a universe that was programmed in advance for this knowledge and ability.

The Program as Combination Game

This is the place to define the term 'program'. To this end, all human involvement in the program should be bracketed out. The program to be defined is a completely automatic one: a combination game based on chance. All possible combinations are realized by chance, but over time all possible combinations are necessarily realized. If, for example, an atomic war is entered into the program of any apparatus as a possibility, then it will happen by chance, but necessarily someday.

The photographic universe, like the one by which we are currently surrounded, is a chance realization of a number of possibilities contained within camera programs which corresponds point for point to a specific situation in a combination game. As other programmed possibilities will be realized by chance in future, the photographic universe is in a permanent state of flux and within it one photograph permanently displaces another. Every given situation in the photographic universe corresponds to a 'throw' in the combination game, i.e. point for point, photograph for photograph. But these are totally redundant photos. The informative photographs of photographers consciously playing against the program signify breakthroughs in the photographic universe - and are not predicted within the program. From which one can draw the following conclusions:

First, the photographic universe is created in the course of a combination game, it is programmed, and it signifies the program. Second, the game proceeds automatically and obeys no intentional strategy. Third, the photographic universe is made up of clear and distinct photographs that each signify one point in the program. Fourth, every single photo is - as the surface of an image - a magical model for the actions of an observer. To summarize: The photographic universe is a means of programming society - with absolute necessity but in each individual case by chance (i.e. automatically) - to act as a magic feedback mechanism for the benefit of a combination game, and of the automatic reprogramming of society into dice, into pieces in the game, into functionaries.

Photography and Full Automation

To be in the photographic universe means to experience, to know and to evaluate the world as a function of photographs. Every single experience, every single bit of knowledge, every single value can be reduced to individually known and evaluated photographs. And every single action can be analyzed through the individual photos taken as models.

This type of existence, then, in which everything experienced, known and evaluated can be reduced to punctuated elements (into 'bits'), is already familiar: It is the world of robots. The photographic universe and all apparatus-based universes robotize the human being and society. New, robot-like actions are observable everywhere: at bank counters, in offices, in factories, in supermarkets, in sport, dancing. When one looks a bit more closely, the same staccato structure is also perceptible, for example in scientific texts, in poetry, in musical composition, in architecture and in political programs.

Correspondingly it is the task of current cultural criticism to analyze this restructuring of experience, knowledge, evaluation and action into a mosaic of clear and distinct elements in every single cultural phenomenon. Within such cultural criticism, the camera will prove to be the ancestor of all those apparatuses that are in the process of robotizing all aspects of our lives, from one's most public acts to one's innermost thoughts, feelings and desires. If one now attempts a criticism of apparatuses, one first sees the photographic universe as the product of cameras and distribution apparatuses. Behind these, one recognizes industrial apparatuses, advertising apparatuses, political, economic management apparatuses, etc. Each of these apparatuses is becoming increasingly automated and is being linked up by cybernetics to other apparatuses. The program of each apparatus is fed in via its input by another apparatus, and in its turn feeds other apparatuses via its output. The whole complex of apparatuses is therefore a super-black-box made up of black boxes.

And it is a human creation: As a product of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, human beings are permanently engaged in developing and perfecting it. Apparatuses were invented in order to function automatically, in other words independently of future human involvement. This is the intention with which they were created: that the human being would be ruled out. And this intention has been successful without a doubt. While the human being is being more and more sidelined, the programs of apparatuses, these rigid combination games, are increasingly rich in elements: they make combinations more and more quickly and are going beyond the ability of the human being to see what they are up to and to control them. Anyone who is involved with apparatuses is involved with black boxes where one is unable to see what they are up to.

Resisting the Photographic Universe?

Returning to the photographic universe: It reflects a combination game, a changing, gaudy jigsaw puzzle of clear and distinct surfaces that each signify an element of the program of the apparatus. It programs the observer to act magically and functionally, and thus automatically, i.e. without obeying any human intention in the process. A number of human beings are struggling against this automatic programming: photographers who attempt to produce informative images, i.e. photographs that are not part of the program of apparatus; critics who attempt to see what is going on in the automatic game of programming; and in general, all those who are attempting to create a space for human intention in a world dominated by apparatuses.

However, the apparatuses themselves automatically assimilate these attempts at liberation and enrich their programs with them. It is consequently the task of a philosophy of photography to expose this struggle between human being and apparatuses in the field of photography and to reflect on a possible solution to the conflict. The hypothesis proposed here is that, if such a philosophy should succeed in fulfilling its task, this would be of significance, not only in the field of photography, but for post-industrial society in general. Admittedly, the photographic universe is only one of a whole number of universes, and there are surely much more dangerous ones amongst them. But the next essay will illustrate that the photographic universe can serve as a model for postindustrial society as a whole and that a philosophy of photography can be the starting point for any philosophy engaging with the current and future existence of human beings.