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SCOTT WALDEN, Photography and Knowledge, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 70, Issue 1, February 2012, Pages 139–149, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2011.01505.x
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Extract
Photography has been associated with the acquisition of knowledge since its inception. Elizabeth Eastlake and Charles Baudelaire, two of the earliest commentators on the medium, saw it as the business of photography “to give evidence of facts” and allowed that the new technology should be “the secretary and clerk of whoever needs an absolute factual exactitude in his profession.” Later, modernist thinkers such as Rudolf Arnheim and Siegfried Kracauer talked of the “authenticity” of the medium and praised it for being “uniquely equipped to record and reveal physical reality.” Contemporary thinkers such as Patrick Maynard and Barbara Savedoff devote crucial chapters of their respective books to discussions of the “detective function” or the “documentary authority” of the medium.1
I am highly sympathetic with the idea that photographs typically offer an epistemic advantage relative to other kinds of representations. But I admit to being uneasy with the metaphors that these thinkers offer. Photographs are not, literally, secretaries or clerks, nor do they have authority over us. Yes, photographs are often authentic in some sense, and they can certainly record or reveal or detect physical reality, but the same can often be said for other kinds of representations, such as words or nonphotographic pictures. It would be good to know in nonmetaphorical terms wherein the epistemic advantage of the medium lies.
