Optical Unconscious

Photography as a form of art work can be so different by the ways people talk about it, make use of it, and also by the certain ideology people view the function of it. Similar to the different meanings and functions that people articulate the action of talking photographs, the significance of images can be so various according to the different purposes and methods that people use to examine them. 

Evidentiary photography can be identified by the use of a camera working as a tool to decode, explore and investigate the traces - evidence inside a picture frame. In 1924, the Hungarian photographer and writer Laszlo Moholy- Nagy noted how the photographic camera "makes visible existences which cannot be perceived or taken in by our optical instrument, the eye." Camera lens, as a mechanism optical instrument, can make the unconscious existences in human eyes visible within the development of science and technology. Walter Benjamin also commented on that point that "photography, with its devices of slow motion and enlargement, reveals the secret. It is through photography that we first discover the existence of this optical unconscious, just as we discover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis." 

We view things with our optical unconscious everyday. That unconsciousness would also be included inside the images we take. When photography is used/operated as an examiner, an enlarger, or a recorder, the traces/ evidence of the unconscious are not wholly imperceptible. Photography functions in reveal the secret of an image, the secret of seeing, the secret of reality, especially the reality that used to be ignored or unconsciously overlooked by our naked eyes. 

Actually, there has always been an interest in seeing evidentiary photography, such as police pictures and crime photography. Discovery the trace/evidence in a still picture with the possibility of enlargement, pause, repetitive examination, and people are attracted by the capability of revealing hidden existence, lies, and secrets. This phenomenon probably links to the popularity of reality TV and other media formats that function in showing the private parts in others' lives. People's desire to peel off the cover of privacy and the secrets of daily life when viewing a photograph demonstrates a certain anxiety about reality itself. Some people find the crime photography is beautiful and compelling because of their fascination about the sacredness of violent death. Privacy, anxiety, and the mysterious sacredness of life, all of these old taboos are now released by the power of media and capability of techniques. 

On the other hand, people examine images differently. What kinds of visual elements can be read as traces/evidence to the viewers are decided by their own understandings. The relationships between traces/evidence and meanings are different according to their cultural backgrounds, ideologies, and social norm systems. Actually, there is even a distinction between traces and evidence to some audience. People connect their personal experiences and understandings to the visual elements inside a picture frame, and then personalize their own interpretation of a pictorial investigation. These personalized reading/editing of a photograph can be done consciously and unconsciously. 

Different readers can interpret a same picture into thousands of meanings. The meanings of visual arts, just like any other kinds of existing such as politics, religions, and value systems, is forever shifting. Every picture reader is like a gatekeeper. The transition of meanings from people to people, generation to generation, culture to culture is activated by the establishment of new relationship between trace/evidence and significance. The shifting of meanings and its following reproduction are performed by new discoveries of relations and how different viewers translate those links between trace/evidence into content.