Daniel Rubinstein

Considered as a whole, Sherman's project touches on three interlinked dimensions of contemporary existence: first, it puts forward a conception of time appropriate to the accelerated tempo of instant communication and new media. Second it grasps the image as a sensation rather than a representation, and third is the insight that the notion of an individual as autonomous and independent is incompatible with the development of new media, the culture of the selfie and Instagram. What follows is an outline of these qualities of Sherman's art.

One of the key claims in Jean-Francois Lyotard's "Discourse, Figure" is that the dialectical method (the backbone of Western philosophy) tends to obscure and hide all which is invisible, illegible and sensual. Lyotard's strategy in exposing this rift within language (and philosophy) is by way of showing that the distance between the sign and the referent should not be thought of as negation but as a form of expression. Instead of the dialectical relation between the image and the object Lyotard proposes radical heterogeneity that he names 'thickness'. This paper examines Lyotard's non-dialectical approach in relation to the title of the book and argues that the comma is positioned as the sensual technology that creates the possibility of discursive continuity.

Despite the great differences between them, both Marx and Wittgenstein reject Cartesian dualism by showing that the mind is a property of action and that hte meaning of an action lies not in subjective consciousness but in the system of social praxis in which an action occurs. This common view provides groundwork for undercutting the enduring debate between 'subjectivism' and 'objectivism' in the social sciences, and is the key to their notionof social explanation. Because the meaning of an action, in their view, is a feature of social order rather than individual consciousness, the form of analysis implied in their work cannot be termed either subjectivist or objectivist. Rather it incorporates the useful aspects of both forms of analysis since understanding action, in this view, presupposes an understanding of the system of social practices in which it occurs. It is argued at several points that both subjectivism and objectivism are largely efforts to resolve the problems posed for social science by dualism, and that the key to the ability of Marx and WIttgenstein to transcend the debate is in their shared rejection of Cartesian dualism. The unique objectives of the study will be of particular interest to all philosophers and social scientists, and all those interested in the interrelationship between the two disciplines.

This interview with Daniel Rubinstein was conducted by Bernd Behr and Andrew Fisher over the summer of 2024. It marks the point at which Daniel resigned his editorship of Philosophy of Photography, which he co-founded with Andrew in 2010. The interview covers these events and their relation to the genesis and the continuing development of Daniel’s intellectual project. Since the 1990s, his work has sought to bring the critiques of representation developed in continental philosophies to bear on the understanding of photography, especially in light of its transformation by networked digital imaging technologies. The interview explores these questions in relation to various publications, with a special focus on Daniel’s 2023 book How Photography Changed Philosophy (Routledge).

This roundtable discussion is based on an online symposium – The Promise of Photography: Scale, Measure and Proportion in a Conflicted Visual Milieu – which took place on 17 September 2021. Since its inception, photography has promised to set things to scale, to grant them measure and proportion, a series of promises that have also entailed moments of irrationality or conflict that persist in and continue to shape the era of global networked digital imaging technologies. The symposium started out from the diagnosis that, whilst photography continues to promise an ordered, proportionate and measured world in which things can be set to their proper scale, it also acts in many ways as an agent of dismeasure, disproportion and the unscalable. In light of this, the roundtable discussion presented here examines a range of different meanings that scale, measure and proportion have accrued in the photographic context and sets out to explore conceptual frameworks and research methodologies through which the current situation might be understood.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced therapists to embrace online sessions, creating a sudden shift in the therapeutic environment. However, the integration of technology into therapy was already underway, prompting the need to explore how the online environment impacts clients and the therapeutic process. This article asks what online therapy can teach about therapy. It highlights the author's experience with online therapy and the unsettling incident that occurred during a session. The article reflects on the philosophical and psychological implications of technology and online communication, suggesting that the glitches and breakdowns in online communication may reveal underlying states of the psyche. Drawing upon Heidegger's philosophy of technology and Whitehead’s process philosophy, it argues that our environment and technologies shape our consciousness and subjectivity, and that both the therapist and the client are partly a product of the media in the digital age. The article also references Freud's theory on the psychopathology of everyday life to suggest that unintentional glitches in online communication may be manifestations of unconscious thoughts and impulses. Overall, the article raises some questions about the use of technology in therapy and the implications for understanding the human psyche. It highlights the need to approach online therapy with caution and awareness of the potential limitations and disturbances that may arise.

This article explores the role of photography in the assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey in 2016. The photography exhibition titled Russia through Turkish Eyes was the background for the assassination. The author argues that photography occupies a paradoxical position of a metalanguage of an event that it simultaneously announces, records, destroys and celebrates while assuming the role of an impartial observer. Photography operates as a counter-factual, exceeding the documentary, and assuming the function not of a witness but of an active participant. The author suggests that in a primitive culture like ours, some objects acquire the status of a portal that facilitates the transformation between symbolic, imaginary and real forms of existence. A camera is one such object. The article concludes that the assassination of the Russian Ambassador cannot be easily separated from the photographic event that preceded it, accompanied it and immortalized it.

This article suggests that when the engagement with photography is limited to questions of recognition and resemblance, such approach stifles our experience of the world and directs us towards monotonous homogeneity in which everything can be represented in a photograph, and a photograph is always a representation of something or other. And yet, a photograph has the potential to move our gaze beyond representation of events and situations in a way that allows us to penetrate the appearance of things and to sense their inner reality, rather than act as a mere illustration.

From Kant to postmodernism the idea of the sublime was always tied with questions of ethics and politics. Kant saw the sublime as a proof that rationality triumphs over nature, validating law and judgement through the subjective experience of pleasure and pain. Lyotard saw in the sublime a symptom of a crisis at which rationality reaches its limit, and subjectivity is confronted with its own collapse. As this chapter will show, both these approaches are inadequate to account for the sublime in 21st century. The failure of liberal democracy and the rise of populist and fascist ideologies calls for a re-evaluation of the sublime as the dissolution of the symbolic order and the coming face to face with the alternative reality of the death drive. This chapter names this reality ‘The Diogenes Complex’, after the homeless beggar who made his form of existence the manifestation of his philosophical creed. Through his performative actions Diogenes has shown that reality is sublime because it is irreconcilable with rational logic and warned against the futility of trying to act rationally in irrational times.

This radical and provocative book outlines a philosophy of photography in the age of the digital: a philosophy of photography that reacts with the increasingly fragmentary, no longer dualistically comprehensible world, the description of which the familiar thought models of representation are no longer suitable. Rubinstein argues that until recently, critical discussions of photography had one thing in common: They all started from the implicit and irrefutable assumption that photographs are media that one has to approach visually; they took it for granted that photographs were meant to be viewed, and they all agreed that it is only through the practices of viewing that the secrets of photography can be unlocked. Whatever interpretations followed, it did not affect the priority of seeing in relation to the image. The triumph of the digital image as a contemporary form of photography, however, forces a reassessment of visibility. Because the digital image makes it clear to everyone that the visible cannot stand for everything that happens to images that begin their life as binary data, then processed algorithmically and sent to various points in a network not as individual images but as data packets.

Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in the Digital Age challenges orthodoxies of photographic theory and practice. Beyond understanding the image as a static representation of reality, it shows photography as a linchpin of dynamic developments in augmented intelligence, neuroscience, critical theory, and cybernetic cultures. Through essays by leading philosophers, political theorists, software artists, media researchers, curators, and experimental programmers, photography emerges not as a mimetic or a recording device but simultaneously as a new type of critical discipline and a new art form that stands at the crossroads of visual art, contemporary philosophy, and digital technologies.

It is strange to live at a time when political liberalism and democracy are seeking new and more imaginative ways of damaging and even destroying themselves. Key preoccupations of liberalism are being employed specifically to undermine and discredit cultural pluralism and to advance new forms of nationalism and racism aimed at repressing the very 'other' that is the focus and the concern of progressive politics. One by one all of the staples of liberalism – such as class, gender, sexuality, race, faith, the body, diversity and identity – are being weaponised not to advance inclusion and tolerance but in order to promote the interests of specific groups, whether these are white supremacists, misogynistic gamers, autocratic nationalists or pro-life activists. In this hall of mirrors, the 'other' is no longer the LGBTQ, the black, or the woman, rather it is the defender of white masculinity, the protester against the demolition of confederate statues, and the born again Evangelical Christian.

Both the analogue and the digital snapshot still belong to the industrial age in which the greatest threat to humanity was the man-machine hybrid – the Frankenstein's monster who turns on his own maker. But as the online philosopher Kim Kardashian teaches by inviting us to look at her through touching, pinching, and swiping, the man-machine paradigm is now replaced by wo/man-image. This is not only a change in the status of the image, it is also, and for the most part, a change in the status of 'man'.

In the twentieth-century photography was the de-facto face of representation, as the visual arm of an industrial society that thought to reproduce the world as commodity for the consumption by individuals. However, in the twenty-first century this logic of mechanical reproduction is augmented by the (fuzzy) logic of algorithmic processing, which does not require individuals and commodities for its operation, but converts both to packets of data. The task of photography today is not to represent the world as an image, but to explore the conditions that make something like an ‘image’ possible.

In this article I explore the metaphysical underpinnings of ‘Art and Objecthood’ in order to tease out its reliance on several of the tenets of conservative art criticism: Plato’s theory of forms, Kant’s aesthetics and the unquestioning acceptance of subjectivity and representation. I argue that it is due to these investments that ‘Art and Objecthood’ fails to come to terms with the condition of art in the age of advanced technology and virtual (simulated) reality. This argument develops by means of clarification of three key concepts: simulacrum, theatricality, and truth.

Both photography and philosophy are invested in light as a form of intelligence, but while representation is central to photography as a recording practice, for Heidegger it is fundamental to the alienation of human beings from the world, and for Deleuze it is the foundation of political conservatism. This chapter brings together these critiques of representation and demonstrates that photography is both the visual form of Western metaphysics and the means for overcoming the boundaries imposed by the representational paradigm. It is argued that far from being rooted in ‘objectivity’, photography is usually interpreted through a philosophical framework that imposes upon it the concomitant ideologies of subjectivity and realism. It further contends that when photography is liberated from the totalizing effects of representation it begins to offer a fractured and fragmented ‘image’ of the interface between current technical, social and cultural norms.

Twenty two years since the arrival of the first consumer digital camera (Tatsuno 36) Western culture is now characterised by ubiquitous photography. The disappearance of the camera inside the mobile phone has ensured that even the most banal moments of the day can become a point of photographic reverie, potentially shared instantly. Supported by the increased affordability of computers, digital storage and access to broadband, consumers are provided with new opportunities for the capture and transmission of images, particularly online where snapshot photography is being transformed from an individual to a communal activity. As the digital image proliferates online and becomes increasingly delivered via networks, numerous practices emerge surrounding the image’s transmission, encoding, ordering and reception. Informing these practices is a growing cultural shift towards a conception of the Internet as a platform for sharing and collaboration, supported by a mosaic of technologies termed Web 2.0.