Spectres of Photography: The Significance of the Apparition of Ghosts in Photographic Representation

Abstract

While traditional thoughts about photographic texts emphasise the role of photographers as the ones who control and manipulate the meaning of the image, spirit photography is an example of texts that problematise the power of photographers. According to Jacques Derrida in his discussion of specter and “hauntology”, the apparition of the spirit dismantles the concept of the frame. That is, the intervention of the spirit deconstructs temporal distinction, making the photographic frame a membrane of the past and the present, instead of capturing the present moment alone. As such the opposition of the past and the present is debunked, the culturally coded elements or signs in photographic texts which Roland Barthes highlights in his early texts on semiology tend to lose their significance. Rather, it is the unintentional or accidental element, which he calls “punctum” that obstructs the construction of meaning in photographs, as Barthes differently argues in his Camera Lucida. Discussing the notion of the “punctum”, this paper criticises the idea of photography as a hegemonic act of the producer to violently fix the meaning of the image in certain discourses. It uses a Portuguese film, The Strange Case of Angélica, as an example for photographic texts that disrupt the boundaries created by the idea of the frame and challenge the authorship of the photographers who are traditionally believed to be in control of the meaning in the images. As suggested in the film’s end in which the photographer meets an absurd death, this paper argues that one’s attempt to perfectly become an author or a creator is rendered impossible as there must be uncontrollable elements in his/her creation that constantly contest the authorial intention in producing texts.