Look a Little (Chuck) Closer: Aesthetic Attention and the Contact Phenomenon

Abstract

There is a sustained phenomenological tradition of describing the character of photographic pictorial experience to consist in part of a feeling of contact with the subject of the photograph. Philosophers disagree, however, about the exact cause of the ‘contact phenomenon’ and whether there is a difference in the phenomenal character between the pictorial experiences of photographs and handmade pictures so that, if a viewer mistakes the type that a token image belongs to, their sense of contact can alter. I argue that the contact phenomenon is contingent upon, and triggered by, the viewer’s perceptual experience of the image, which may be subject to change depending upon how a viewer attends to an image. I develop a hybrid account to resolve how the perceptual and cognitive aspects of a viewer’s experience interact and produce the complex phenomenology, including conflicting mental states, that a viewer can undergo during the described experiences.

#Filterdrop: Attending to Photographic Alterations

“…Photographic pictorial experience is also highly likely to prompt a sense of "epistemic contact". 14 This is a feeling of immediacy where the experience of seeing the visual properties of the subject of the image is similar to the visual experience one would have, seeing these face-to-face. This phenomenon is caused by the arrangement of marks on the surface of figurative pictures 'which, when presented to our visual systems, cause those visual systems to operate in more or less the same ways as they have been caused to operate had they been exposed […] to the things of which they are pictures'.…”

“…17 Nonetheless, the amount of brightness seen in many historic black-and-white photographs, for instance, does not resemble our experiences of encountering subjects in low-light settings very well. 18 Indeed, there is evidence that the experience of epistemic contact can vary in degree. For example, digital colourist Marina Amaral has meticulously restored and colourized a great number of degraded black and white historic photographs, commenting that 'when you see a photo in colour I think you instantly feel more connected to what you are seeing.'…”

“…Given that our perceptual experiences are subject to 'all kinds of top-down influences from non-perceptual processes', 21 how a viewer attends to an image upon receiving further information about it may also alter their sense of epistemic contact with the subject. 22 For instance, upon first glance at the photograph Heinz Riefenstahl, Frau Dr. Ebersberg, Leni Riefenstahl, #Filterdrop: Attending to Photographic Alterations Adolf Hitler and Ilse Riefenstahl in the park of the Reich Chancellery, 1937, one gets the impression of "seeing" a moment in which Hitler and his company are conversing. However, as Paloma Atencia-Linares highlights, this is an instance of 'deceptive photography'.…”

“…26 Indeed, as per the proposed account, once such alteration becomes visible the degree of experienced realism (i.e., of the physics of the scene) decreases and so the sense of contact lessens. 27 Spotting these giveaways is not, however something that tends to come naturally. Studies have shown that people frequently neglect information, like whether shadows and reflections in a scene are consistent, that could aid them in detecting whether an image has been altered.…”