Mario Slugan

It is often claimed that because they are indexical analog photographs have a more privileged access to reality than digital ones. Recently, however, scholars such as Gunning (2004) and Turvey (2011) have argued that digital photographs are no less indexical than analog ones. In this presentation I hope to build on this proposal by pointing out some of its failings and developing an alternative. Although agreeing with Gunning and Turvey, I will argue that numerous other representational media such as painting are also no less indexical than photographs if Peirce’s definition of index as an existential guarantee is followed. Instead, the privileged access to reality analog photography enjoys is to be articulated not in terms of indexicality but »material identity« understood as »being a part of«. Building on my forthcoming re-interpretation of Bazin in which I argue that there are analog photographs a part of which is a part of the object photographed (Slugan 2016), I will claim that no such digital photographs exist. In the case of analog negatives of light-emitting objects what a negative of the Sun integrates into itself physically are literally the photons that make up the body that is the Sun. In digital photography, by contrast, no electrons making up the voltage in flip-flop circuits (essentially what we talk of when referring to an information bit) are the electrons which absorb the photons when light makes contact with the digital camera’s photo-sensors. Principally then, analog photographs do have a privileged access to reality.

Mario Slugan is a PhD candidate in cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago. His interests lie on the intersection between philosophy, film, and literature with a special focus on the existence of narrators in literary and film fiction. He has presented at numerous conferences including Film and Reality, SCSMI and SCMS and his articles have appeared in publications such as »Slavic Review«, »Film and Philosophy«, and an edited volume on fiction titled »How to Make Believe«. His re-interpretation of Bazin is to appear in »Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind«.