192 Eva Castringius
imaging and image-interfering depiction. In the camera-less autoradiograph,
the radioactive radiation forms on the negative in a situation produced by the
photograph but with only limited control. In the scientific and the artistic
contexts (Goro and Takeda), different criteria of assessments are employed in
the autoradiographs, which are found again in the interpretation of the depiction according to the professional background and individual questions posed.
The photographs of all four photographers obtain a particular urgency
by referring indexically to the resulting damage of the nuclear explosion
in each case and testify to it on the material level. In Roland Barthes, the
photographed object shines like “the delayed rays of a star” 69 from the photograph and connects to his persona as “a sort of umbilical cord.” 70 With these
metaphors, he establishes a material connection between him as viewer and
the photograph, which results in an updating of the past. Applied to the cited
photographic examples and their traces of contamination, in each case, the
photographed nuclear catastrophes obtain a dangerous contemporaneity.
Translated from German by Steven Lindberg
Notes
1. Günther Anders, Der Mann auf der Brücke: Tagebuch aus Hiroshima und Nagasaki
(Berlin: Union, 1965), 148.
2. See Günther Anders, Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1961), 233ff.
3. See Michael Lucken, “Hiroshima—Nagasaki: Des photographies pour abscisse et
ordonnée,” in Études photographiques, no. 18 (May 2006): 4–25, esp. 6. The author
refers to the connections between atomic bombs and photographs, and to the correspondences between “the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” and the metaphors of the past and death in the photographic process.
4. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard (New York, NY: Hill and
Wang, 1982), 80–81.
5. In Barthes, the photographic trace is immediately connected to the photographic
process: “For the noeme ‘That-has-been’ was possible only on the day when a
scientific circumstance (the discovery that silver halogens were sensitive to light)
made it possible to recover and print directly the luminous rays emitted by a variously lighted object.” Barthes, Camera Lucida, 80.
6. They include Charles Sanders Peirce, André Bazin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag,
Rosalind Krauss, Philippe Dubois, Marry Anne Doane, and William J.T. Mitchell;
see Peter Geimer, “Das Bild als Spur: Mutmassungen über ein untotes Paradigma,”
in Gernot Grube, Sybille Krämer, and Werner Kogge, eds., Spur: Spurenlesen als Orientierungstechnik und Wissenskunst (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007), 95–120.
7. Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 70.
8. Susan Schuppli, “Radical Contact Prints,” Camera Atomica, ed. John O’Brian, exh.
cat. (Toronto, ON: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2015), 277–291, esp. 281.
9. Susan Schuppli, “Radical Contact Prints,” 281.
10. In this text, the index is equated with the physical relationship of the referent/
object to its sign/representamen. The concept of the index goes back to Charles S.
Peirce’s semiotics. Peirce calls the physical reference of a representamen to its referent “indexical” and emphasizes the causal connection between sign and object.
imaging and image-interfering depiction. In the camera-less autoradiograph,
the radioactive radiation forms on the negative in a situation produced by the
photograph but with only limited control. In the scientific and the artistic
contexts (Goro and Takeda), different criteria of assessments are employed in
the autoradiographs, which are found again in the interpretation of the depiction according to the professional background and individual questions posed.
The photographs of all four photographers obtain a particular urgency
by referring indexically to the resulting damage of the nuclear explosion
in each case and testify to it on the material level. In Roland Barthes, the
photographed object shines like “the delayed rays of a star” 69 from the photograph and connects to his persona as “a sort of umbilical cord.” 70 With these
metaphors, he establishes a material connection between him as viewer and
the photograph, which results in an updating of the past. Applied to the cited
photographic examples and their traces of contamination, in each case, the
photographed nuclear catastrophes obtain a dangerous contemporaneity.
Translated from German by Steven Lindberg
Notes
1. Günther Anders, Der Mann auf der Brücke: Tagebuch aus Hiroshima und Nagasaki
(Berlin: Union, 1965), 148.
2. See Günther Anders, Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1961), 233ff.
3. See Michael Lucken, “Hiroshima—Nagasaki: Des photographies pour abscisse et
ordonnée,” in Études photographiques, no. 18 (May 2006): 4–25, esp. 6. The author
refers to the connections between atomic bombs and photographs, and to the correspondences between “the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” and the metaphors of the past and death in the photographic process.
4. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard (New York, NY: Hill and
Wang, 1982), 80–81.
5. In Barthes, the photographic trace is immediately connected to the photographic
process: “For the noeme ‘That-has-been’ was possible only on the day when a
scientific circumstance (the discovery that silver halogens were sensitive to light)
made it possible to recover and print directly the luminous rays emitted by a variously lighted object.” Barthes, Camera Lucida, 80.
6. They include Charles Sanders Peirce, André Bazin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag,
Rosalind Krauss, Philippe Dubois, Marry Anne Doane, and William J.T. Mitchell;
see Peter Geimer, “Das Bild als Spur: Mutmassungen über ein untotes Paradigma,”
in Gernot Grube, Sybille Krämer, and Werner Kogge, eds., Spur: Spurenlesen als Orientierungstechnik und Wissenskunst (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007), 95–120.
7. Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 70.
8. Susan Schuppli, “Radical Contact Prints,” Camera Atomica, ed. John O’Brian, exh.
cat. (Toronto, ON: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2015), 277–291, esp. 281.
9. Susan Schuppli, “Radical Contact Prints,” 281.
10. In this text, the index is equated with the physical relationship of the referent/
object to its sign/representamen. The concept of the index goes back to Charles S.
Peirce’s semiotics. Peirce calls the physical reference of a representamen to its referent “indexical” and emphasizes the causal connection between sign and object.