Why does photography work?

 

About a year ago, an article was published in Quanta that caused quite a stir. The premises it put forward were not exactly new but are essentially extensions of arguments nearly 100 years old about the implications of developments in physics, specifically quantum mechanics. The gist of the article – if I may paraphrase – is that there is no ‘objective reality’ because at the quantum (subatomic) level, there can be no definitive knowledge of the characteristics of sub atomic particles, only probabilities.  Taken to its logical conclusion, there is no ‘objective reality’ at all and the ‘reality’ we think we live in is a actually the result of a set of evolutionary strategies that allow us to cope with this uncertainty. It’s not actually a ‘snake’, it’s a shared delusion of ‘snake’ which allows us to identify a threat.

I get the quantum argument. I understand the science and I can follow the inevitable chain of conclusions. I even find it liberating – in a way – to entertain the idea that there is nothing but individual ‘reality’. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this or the first source I have heard it from.

But I have one problem –  and it’s not Schrodinger’s cat. If everything posited by physics is true and if all the logical conclusions  of quantum physics are inevitable, why does photography work? Let me ask that again – why does photography work?

I have already argued on this blog that the direct connection between digital photography and any objective reality is now broken but the basic principle still applies: photography – in either the antique meaning of wet photography or the contemporary meaning of digital photography – is always (initially, anyway) a process of pure physics. Silver responds to exposure to light. A chemical (physical) process fixes the result of that response and we have an image. In digital photography, sensors respond to light and the response is recorded. Oddly, what we see in the result of both stubbornly corresponds closely to our shared experience of the world.

If the evolutionary scientists and the physicists are correct, what we should see in a photograph is nameless, unrecognizable chaos – but we don’t.  I find it extremely difficult to believe that humans are able to – in a 2 dimensional re-presentation of ‘reality’ created by a purely physical process – instantly reconstruct a massive, shared delusion. I find it even more unbelievable that animals can do the same – but some do.

It’s absurd to argue that we ‘created’ or ‘shaped’ photography to reflect our own vision of the world –  a cursory familiarity with the early history of photography immediately disproves that. And even the adventures into deep spectra photography, infrared photography and high speed photography don’t fundamentally challenge our shared view of ‘reality’. Even weirder, some animals seem to be able to share our perception of those images. Just check YouTube for video of cats watching tennis on TV.

A process extrapolated from pure physics gives us images of the world that correspond very closely to the world all humans  and even some animals recognize, even while physics insists that it doesn’t actually exist.  I don’t dispute the premises or evidence of quantum mechanics, and I am not sure I even question the conclusions of the arguments. I just have this one question …

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