•  180
    What Is a Photographic Register?
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81 (3): 408-413. 2023.
    This Discussion Piece is a response to Mark Windsor's Discussion Piece (2023) 'Photographic Registers are Latent Images', which is a response to my article, (2021) 'Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why we need a Multi-stage Account of Photography' JAAC 79(2) 161-174.. I argue that a photosensitive surface does not produce invisible pictorial features when it is exposed to light, and conclude, contra Windsor, that a photographic register is not a latent image. I argue that Windsor does not suc…Read more
  • Against Imprinting: The Photographic Image as a Source of Evidence
    Social Research: An International Quarterly 89 (4): 947-969. 2022.
    A photographic image is said to provide evidence of a photographed scene because it is a causal imprint of reflected light, an indexical trace of real objects and events. Though widely established in the history, theory, and philosophy of photography, this traditional imprinting model must be rejected because it relies on a “single-stage” misconception of the photographic process: the idea that a photographic image comes into existence at the time of exposure. In its place, a “multistage” accoun…Read more
  •  30
    My thesis is that the say-show distinction is the basis of Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy in both the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and the Philosophical Investigations (1953). Wittgenstein said that the Investigations should be read in conjunction with the Tractatus. To understand the Tractatus we must understand the say-show distinction: the principle that "what can be shown, cannot be said". A correct interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophy will explain the signif…Read more
  •  154
    Philosophical Scepticism and the Photographic Event
    In Jan-Erik Lundström & Liv Stoltz (eds.), Thinking Photography - Using Photography, Centrum För Fotografi. pp. 98-109. 2012.
    The puzzle that concerns me is whether it is possible to establish a substantive difference between photographic images and other kinds of visual image, which can explain the special epistemic and aesthetic qualities of photographs, without giving way to scepticism about photographic art. In this essay I offer a philosophical account of the photographic process which is able to resolve this tension. I use this account to argue that, while some photographs are mind independent, mind independence …Read more
  •  7
    Photography
    In Dominic McIver Lopes & Berys Gaut (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. pp. 585-595. 2013.
  •  30
    VII—Reflecting, Registering, Recording and Representing: From Light Image to Photographic Picture
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 122 (2): 141-164. 2022.
    Photography is valued as a medium for recording and visually reproducing features of the world. I seek to challenge the view that photography is fundamentally a recording process and that every photograph is a record—a view that I claim is based on a ‘single-stage’ misconception of the process. I propose an alternative, ‘multi-stage’ account in which I argue that causal registration of light is not equivalent to recording and reproducing an image. Intervention or non-intervention by photographer…Read more
  •  38
    Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79 (2): 161-174. 2021.
    Some photographs show determinate features of a scene because the photographed scene had those features. This dependency relation is, rightly, a consensus in philosophy of photography. I seek to refute many long-established theories of photography by arguing that they are incompatible with this commitment. In Section II, I classify accounts of photography as either single-stage or multi-stage. In Section III, I analyze the historical basis for single-stage accounts. In Section IV, I explain why …Read more
  •  26
    Wittgenstein’s ‘Picture Theory’ and the Æsthetic Experience of Clear Thoughts
    In David Wagner, Wolfram Pichler, Elisabeth Nemeth & Richard Heinrich (eds.), Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society - N.S. 17, De Gruyter. pp. 143-161. 2011.
    In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein appeals to clarity when he characterises the aim, task and results of philosophy. In this essay I suggest that his ‘picture theory’ of language implies that clarity has aesthetic significance in philosophical work. Wittgenstein claims that the task of philosophy is to make thoughts clear. In the ‘picture theory’ of thought and language, a thought expressed in language is a proposition with a sense and a proposition is a picture of reality. The q…Read more
  •  22
    In this paper I make a comparison between the imaginative activity of reading literature and the elucidatory activity of doing philosophy. My aim is to highlight significant features of a non-traditional view of philosophical method – inspired by Wittgenstein.
  •  69
    Clear as Mud
    Journal of Philosophical Research 31 277-294. 2006.
    In both the Tractatus and the Investigations, Wittgenstein claimed that the aim of philosophy is to achieve clarity: to see clearly the logic or grammar of our language. However, his view of clarity underwent an important change, one of many changes that led Wittgenstein to write, in the preface to the Investigations, that his new ideas “could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of my old way of thinking.” I argue that certain “grave mistakes” of the Tract…Read more
  •  54
    Facing the Camera: Self‐portraits of Photographers as Artists
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (1): 56-66. 2012.
    Self-portrait photography presents an elucidatory range of cases for investigating the relationship between automatism and artistic agency in photography— a relationship that is seen as a problem in the philosophy of art. I discuss self-portraits by photographers who examine and portray their own identities as artists working in the medium of photography. I argue that the automatism inherent in the production of a photograph has made it possible for artists to extend the tradition of self-portra…Read more
  •  141
    The Real Challenge for an Aesthetics of Photography
    In Aaron Ridley & Alex Neill (eds.), Arguing about Art (3rd ed.), Routledge. 2007.
    An extract from this unpublished article is published in Neill & Ridley (eds.) Arguing about Art (2007).
  •  272
    Fixing the Image: Re-thinking the 'Mind-independence' of Photographs
    Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 6 (2): 1-22. 2009.
    We are told by philosophers that photographs are a distinct category of image because the photographic process is mind-independent. Furthermore, that the experience of viewing a photograph has a special status, justified by a viewer’s knowledge that the photographic process is mind-independent. Versions of these ideas are central to discussions of photography in both the philosophy of art and epistemology and have far-reaching implications for science, forensics and documentary journalism. Mind-…Read more
  •  374
    This article contains a survey of recent debates in the philosophy of photography, focusing on aesthetic and epistemic issues in particular. Starting from widespread notions about automatism, causality and realism in the theory of photography, the authors ask whether the prima facie tension between the epistemic and aesthetic embodied in oppositions such as automaticism and agency, causality and intentionality, realism and fictional competence is more than apparent. In this context, the article …Read more
  •  289
    Photography and causation: Responding to Scruton's scepticism
    British Journal of Aesthetics 49 (4): 327-340. 2009.
    According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton’s scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these cannot force him to give up his notion of the ideal photograph. My approach is to argue that Scruton has misconstrued the role of causation in his discussion of photography. I claim that although Scruton insists that the ideal photograph is defined b…Read more
  •  1
    I examine the relationship between complete analysis and clarificatory analysis and explain why Wittgenstein thought he required both in his account of how to solve the problems of philosophy. I first describe Wittgenstein’s view of how philosophical confusions arise, by explaining how it is possible to misunderstand the logic of everyday language. I argue that any method of logical analysis in the Tractatus will inevitably be circular, but explain why this does not threaten the prospect of solv…Read more