Prawda/y (w) fotografii. Od obrazu rzeczywistości do rzeczywistości obrazu

Abstract

The issue of “authenticity” of photography has been habitually related to its technical specificity and capabilities. In general, it was concerned about the automatism and inquisitiveness (precision) of the act of preservation, incomparable to the dispositions of traditional image media. It was supposed that those capabilities determine the “real depiction” and photography’s typical “ability to confirm the authenticity.” It was the rule of analogy, and the relation between a photographic image and the depicted reality that established this criterion of authenticity, much as in the discourses of the truth. This assumption has been called into question in this text, inspired by culturalism and pan-interpretationism. It is insofar as we relate not to the world as such, but rather to the way in which the world exists for us in the realm of certain cultural, social and discursive contexts. In consequence, the issues of the truth and the authenticity of photography are specified in and through interpretation, always within the predetermined discursive strategies and cultural justifications of the interpretive communities. The truth and the photography’s authenticity are then dependent inevitably on the context, and subject to discursive conditioning. Furthermore, the actors of interpretation act upon the current convictions of the interpretive communities, which those actors share and perceive as their own.