Abstract:

The separation of photography and image requires a new understanding of the non-image nature of photography. Starting from the five paradoxes of image, this paper examines the basic nature of image, and then distinguishes photography from image. Photography is an “action” and a “process”, while image is the trace that connects the subject and the object through the camera. The essence of photography lies in the tension between the “given” of nature and the “capture” of the photographer, and many important aesthetic judgments in the history of photography theories are made by emphasizing this tension. For instance, André Bazan and Roland Barthes emphasize on the “given”, whereas Bauhaus and Pictorialism underline the significance of the “capture”. The media essence of photography has also changed with the development of technology. The traditional photochemical photography and photoelectric signal photography are quite different in terms of the nature of image. Moreover, the generative image represented by video game photography is independent of the visual objects from the external world. It becomes the photography that “captures” the virtual world, but still follows the intrinsic definition of photography.

Key words: photography, image, the given, capture, photographic action, optic-signal photography, generative image