"The Ontology of the Photographic Image" - Maya Swanson

I found the most intriguing part of Andre Bazin’s “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” to be the very beginning. His thoughts gave me a better understanding as to why people are so fascinated with the photograph. Bazin begins his essay with talk of how, ever since the dawn of humanity, people have been obsessed with preserving life images of the dead, starting with the ancient Egyptians and mummification. “The image helps us to remember the subject and to preserve him from a second spiritual death.” It is difficult to remember those who are not around anymore unless there is an accurate image of the person still around.
However, artistic thought began to turn, and painting stopped being so much an accurate representation of the world and began to focus on aesthetic expression and new creation. Bazin says that the most skilled artists are able to “hold reality at their command and mold it at will into the fabric of their art.”
But with the invention of the photograph, people’s obsession once more turned to realism. Photography’s amazing ability to capture reality accurately emphasized how paintings could not do this. “No matter how skillful the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity. The fact that a human hand intervened cast a shadow of doubt over the image.” Bazin stresses the superiority of the photograph because it can duplicate reality in a way that painting cannot. All other art forms require the intervention of humans, while photography does not depend on human craftsmanship; “Photo is a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays no part.”