The Ontology of the Photographic Image

Andre  Bazin talks about the photographic image and the cinematic experience as capturing  the real. Laura Mulvey writes that it is impossible to get at a picture of the real because our perceptions are never natural. Is it possible to reconcile these two points of view?
According to Andre Bazin, photography and cinema is an improved version of the ancient Egyptians attempt to defeat death by ensuring the survival of the corporeal body. By preserving the physical appearance of the body, the Egyptians protected against the passage of time and satisfied a human psychological need. This Egyptian tradition gave rise to the preservation of life through the representation of life.
Although no one believes in the ontological identity of images and models, all agree that images help in remembering subjects by preserving them from spiritual death. However, the creation of images in modern times no longer serve the single purpose of preserving life, it also enables the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real. Andre insists that photography and cinema satisfy the human obsession with realism (Andre & Hugh, 1960).
Andre compares photography to painting and concludes that photography achieves realism because it occurs without the intervention of humans. In photography, the only important things are the object in focus and the instrument used to capture its image. The automatic formation of an image on the sensitive plates by a mechanical instrument eliminates human personality in the proceeding. The objective nature of photographs forces the humans to accept as real the object reproduced by the camera. The image captured by the camera is of a real object existing in time and space. Photography therefore frees the object from the handicaps of time and space because it satisfies the human needs of perfect representation of the object in reality (Andre & Hugh, 1960). Photography and cinema lay bare the realities they capture without the limitations of the photographers personality enabling the viewer of the image to perceive the image as he or she would if it were in reality in front of his or her eyes. Photography produces an image that is a representation of the reality in nature. Like a hallucination, photography leads to the disappearing of what is real and what is imaginary (Daniel, 2006).
Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist who argues it is impossible for photography and film to capture reality because the images are viewed from different perspectives. She argues that the cinematic apparatus put the viewer in a masculine position. According to Laura, women in films are only objects of desire whereas the males are the heroes of the films. Mulveys views are informed by Hollywood movies released during the 1950s and 60s, such as ‘the apartment.’ She insists that there are three perspectives in the films. First, the woman is coded as an object of desire for the viewer; the other two are the camera positioning and the male viewer. The male viewer engages two distinct modes. They include the voyeuristic and fetishistic modes. Her critics argue that she only provides an analysis of the audience based only on gender only. Studlar, a feminist critic argue that Mulveys view that male derive pleasure through dominating and controlling is fraud. Studlar insist that both the male and female viewers enjoy photography and cinema because they assume a passive role allowing the images to overwhelm them (Furstenau, 2010).
Andre argues that photography captures reality in it essence whereas Mulvey argues it is impossible for it to capture reality because perceptions vary. Mulvey argues from a feminist perspectives and her focus is to change the patriarchal system she perceives in the film industry. However, Andre focuses on photography and cinema in its creation and representation of the reality as it is in front of the lens. According to Andre, the camera technology captures the objects in time and space in their entirety allowing different people to perceive different information from the image as if they were in reality there. Mulvey only analyses one perspective of the objects captured by the photographs and cinema. However, the films she considers have more than one way of perceiving because despite her views, the females also enjoy the movies (Furstenau, 2010). Some of the photographs, especially those that seem to have different images depending on the viewers perception, such as the vase or face image, favor Andre argument over Mulveys.
How do older and newer media relate, and in what ways does each new medium relate to and differ from its predecessors?
Painting, photography, and cinema are forms of plastic realism with the later being the most advanced. Painting includes symbolic and realism painting, however, striking a balance between the two is tricky especially because the painter perception has a hand in the final product. Human have a psychological need to capture reality as it is and preserve it beyond their life span. Photographs such as the Mona Lisa capture the reality and beauty of the subject in details; however, the painters perception is evident in the details. The most monumental moment in the history of these efforts was the discovery of the camera and the sensitive plates. This mechanical system creates a three-dimension illusion, which is similar to the one humans see through their eyes (David, 2011). Whereas painting is tore between symbolism and realism, the technology used to create photographs firmly enables them to capture reality.
The objectivity in photography differentiates it from painting because in photography only the camera intervenes between the object and image. The personality of the photographer only influence the object he or she chooses for photographing and the purpose for the photographing. The cinema is a recent discovery and is more dominant than photography and painting. Whereas cinema surpasses photography, it enshrines it perfectly because cinema comprises of multiple still photographs flipping through a screen faster than the human eye can identify them individually. These leads to illusions of motion bringing the still images to life further extending the realism role played by photography (David, 2011). A study in Scarlet is a 1933 film that uses the cinema technology to create images of real life that outlast even their creators. With the recent development of digital technology, movies from this era are analyzed with the possibility of using individual frames.
 References
Andre, B. & Hugh, G. (1960). The Ontology of the Photographic Image. Film Quarterly. 13(4) 4-9.
Daniel, M. (2006). Rethinking Bazin: Ontology and Realist Aesthetics. Critical Inquiry. 443-481.
Furstenau, M. (2010). The film theory reader: Debates and arguments. London: Routledge.
David, C. (2011). Photography and Cinema. New York: Pillowbookworm.