Stockholm Colloquium in Philosophy: Andrew Reisner (Uppsala)

The metaphysics of the formal objects of photographs

Föreläsning

Datum:

torsdag 24 april 2025

Tid:

16.00 – 17.45

Plats:

D289

Abstract

Typical photographs may be said to be 'of' something in two different senses. One sense is that of the photographic or artistic subject. For example, a photograph taken of a friend drinking a beer may have one's friend as its subject. However, the same photograph has 'captured' rather more than that. It records potentially many objects over a period of time. The thing that a photograph is of overall, rather than its subject per se, is what may be called its 'formal object'. This is the other sense in which a photograph may be said to be 'of' something.

This paper (or rather paper in development) presents a theory of the formal object of simple photographs, photographs produced from a single actuation of the shutter. I suggest that the formal objects of simple photographs are events. I argue that this account cannot be straightforwardly extended to many photographs that combine multiple shutter actuations, both for double/multiple exposures of the same frame and for images produced from combining several distinct frames.

I consider some consequences for the way we might want to understand or perhaps appreciate visually identical photographs produced through different capture and combination techniques. One interesting consequence is that some photographs may not be of anything at all.