Reality

Bazin's unilateral privileging of photography's ability to capture reality is a similar line of thinking that underlies the equivocation with TV's supposed "liveness" with real-ness. Photography's capability to capture a historically "real" moment does guarantee its ability to give a viewer a feeling that they are witnessing some kind of truth, just as live television is in no way an un-mediated transmission of reality. While the critics of TV we've read write as though TV has duped all viewers into this misreading of "liveness," I would argue that Iona's and other's articulations of the alienation they feel while watching American TV is just such an example of "liveness" and immediacy failing to absorb the viewer. Similarly, photography's legitimacy as historical evidence (which is also, I think, a highly unstable claim) is different its ability to make the viewer feel as if they are witnessing "virginal purity" (15). Not every photograph carries Barthes' punctum. It is inaccurate to define art as a successful capture of reality--if this was so, every photograph would be a piece of art. Reality, defined as physical accuracy, cannot be confused with a feeling of emotional truth. Bazin agrees with me on this, but doesn't point out that photography, like painting, can fail to resonate with emotional validity.