索引的目光:早期中国摄影视觉的发生

The Indexed Gaze:The Occurrence of Early Chinese Photographic Vision

在摄影师、作品、内容、风格等摄影史的主体内容之外,视觉性问题是一个更内在而核心的内容,并且蕴含在前述每一个部分之中。早期人像摄影中的表情与目光是凸显摄影视觉问题的重要内容,但被研究者长久忽略。朝向画外的目光揭示了人与摄影机器之间的拍摄关系——一个自动的图像机器从其拍摄对象身上榨取出一个影像,这是人类学的新现象,是机械复制时代人的实践生活和符号生活的新内容。此种摄影人类学基于摄影的索引性本体,并带来一种可称为是摄影视觉的感知机制,一种装置式的、技术化的、索引性的、碎片化的、捕捉式的、具有科学优势的视觉感知成为中国视觉现代性转型的重要动力。

Beyond the main aspects of the history of photography,such as photographers,artworks,content,and styles,the issue of visuality is a more intrinsic and central one that can be found embedded in each of the aforementioned aspects.Facial expressions and gazes in early portrait photography are important elements that highlight the problem of visuality in photography,yet have been long neglected by researchers.The gaze toward the outside of the picture reveals the photographic relationship between the human being and the camera—a machine that squeezes an image out of its subject,a new phenomenon in anthropology,a new element in the practical and symbolic life of the human being in the age of mechanical reproduction.This visual anthropology is based on the indexical ontology of photography and brings about a perceptual mechanism that can be described as photographic vision,a visual perception that is device-like,technological,indexical,fragmented,captured,and with a scientific advantage that has become an important driving force for the transformation of visual modernity in China.