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Photography and Print : the research of the technical image

Park Sangwoo 1

1중앙대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to reveal the fundamentally different nature of the two technical images: photography and print. Since the last 30 years, we have often debated whether photography is the ‘index’ or the ‘print’. Especially, a french historian of art Georges DiDi-Huberman intented to use the concept of print very largely as a paradigm. He said that the photography should be considered as a particular case of the system of the print. Does the photography belong to the print? Is the photography represented in the same way as other systems of the print such as footsteps, fingerprints, or wood printings? In an attempt to clarify the relation between photography and print, first of all, we examine the technical property of these two systems. After this, we explore commonality and differences between the two systems. In doing so, this paper further examines the technical nature in the system of print itself in a general sense that has not been discussed sufficiently in academics. This paper reaches the conclusion that the photography and the print are very different systems at every levels which constitute a system of the representation: projection, support, and agent. In terms of the mode of projection, while the photography is the conical projection, the print is the straight parallel projection. For the support, the print uses whatever materials such as paper, stone, wood, etc, but the photography very particular material like the photo-sensitized surface. For the agent, the photography is the system of light, precisely that of the photon, while the print is the system of pressure. In other words, the photography is the result of the effect of the photon on the photo-sensitized surface, while the print is that of the pressure of the one thing on the other. And if the photography is the system of the distance between image and reference, the print is that of the contact. The photography and the print are the very different system in terms of the mode of production of the image. They thus show different features in the sense of their efficiency, uses and functions. In terms of the fidelity of representation, the print is more effective than the photography. A cast of the face is more similar to the real visage than the photographical portrait is. But in terms of the automatism of the mode of production, the print goes through less mechanical process than the photography does.

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