Photography off the Scale: Technologies and Theories of the Mass Image

Abstract

Photography Off the Scale is a long-awaited reader, made in collaboration with media archaeologist Jussi Parikka and photography theorist Tomáš Dvořák, leading the very active department of theory of photography at world-renowned film academy FAMU (Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts) in Prague. The reader is an outcome of the international conference organized in winter 2018 at FAMU Prague, bringing up a selection of its papers by many familiar names—to name a few: Sean Cubitt, Andrew Fisher, Annebella Pollen, Joanna Zylinska and Geoffrey Batchen. The book is structured in three major sections: Scale, Measure, Experience, followed by Metapictures and Remediations, and finally, Models, Scans and AI. The opening essay by Sean Cubitt defines excess in scale by introducing us to the “mass image” theme, an image agglomerate constructing new databases. Such an image does not have a purpose of representation; its meaning is in monitoring human behavior. Mass images are overproduced, overaccumulated and lead to an “apocalypse of images” (p. 27). The next chapter, by one of the book editors, Tomáš Dvořák, deals with the problem of measure by revoking Hegel’s dialectics and its definition of measure as a relationship between quantity and quality. Dvořák analyzes the photographic capacity to represent beyond natural human vision, ranging from microscopic representation to cosmic photographs and defining the excessive as “quantifying and calculating” (p. 46). Andrew Fisher’s chapter expands his pivotal writing on photographic scales from 2012. Fisher now employs the noun scalability, used to describe the growth of informational and even more economical systems. Contrary to all earlier authors analyzing scale, Michelle Henning analyzes the reduction of emotions to emojis. Tereza Stejskalova expands the analysis by stretching a line from the “bubble vision” of 360° immersion to poor and weak images. In the second part of the reader, the opening essay by Annebella Pollen borrows W.J.T Mitchell’s concept of metapictures to approach photographic excess by reduplication and production of copies of copies. Michal Šimunek, also from FAMU, continues the theme of metapictures in his analysis of the widespread amateur practice of Lomography. Josef Ledvina’s focus expands the concept of metapictoriality by mapping various reproduction methods such as scans, prints, screenshots, etc., also distinguishing between the poor image and “resolution overkill.” The third section opens with Jussi Parikka’s article taking a step beyond visibility to analyze post-lenticular photography such as radar technologies, LIDAR images, ultrasonic scans, motion data fees, etc. Lukaš Likavčan and Paul Heinicker proceed to autographic images, ones by which a phenomenon writes itself inside the image, distinguishing it from ordinary representations and operational images on which many articles have recently been published. Joanna Zylinska’s contribution defines “undigital photography,” or photography that comes not from optical processes but instead from computation. The final contribution to the reader is a beautiful conversation between one of the most theoretically grounded photographers today, Joan Fontcuberta, and theorist Geoffrey Batchen, furnished with many of Fontcuberta’s pictures. The concept of scale, important in photographic production, which has somehow gotten lost in the theory of the medium, is in this reader fully captured from many discursive angles. In addition to the major theme of scale, the book provides in-depth research on ubiquitous photography and mass image, metapictures and AI photography, making the reader a compendium of the most essential theories rising around photography in postdigital times. For its substantial covering of themes, it is a book worth buying, as it would be read more than once. The book is available in both printed (paperback and hardcover) versions and as an e-version, but due to the number and quality of full-page illustrations, the eBook might not be the best option for readers dedicated to the theme.