Writing ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’ in 1945, André Bazin identified the essence of the photographic image - and, therefore, the moving image - as its physical, indexical relationship to the material environment, its formation in response to the light reflecting from the surfaces of the world. For Bazin, this indexical relationship gives the photographic image a comparable status to a fingerprint, footprint, or deathmask, also formed through imprint or impression. Bazin, of course, had in mind the analogue, photochemical image; but can we consider the digital image, captured by a light-sensitive chip, to be similarly defined by an indexical relationship to the real, material world? Does the digital image possess as ‘strong’ an indexical relationship to the physical world as the analogue image? Standing Ground is a reflexive video work, which incorporates and reveals its own production processes and technology. In the key strand of the work, a series of landscape images shows a dilapidated, abandoned farmhouse, threatened by approaching cliffs. The filmmaker enters each image, and uses a small pinhole camera; the exposed still appears onscreen after the landscape, a rough analogue still. The piece is designed to bring into focus differences and similarities between the analogue and digital, as image, media and production technology.
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