ABSTRACT
Scott starts by using an excerpt from Bioy Casare’s novel The Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata (1989) to illustrate two different positions in the debate over how much self-expression photography allows the photographer. One position argues that the photograph occurs at exposure, while in contact with the real world and it depends on the photographer’s ability to see and anticipate. The photographer does not impose himself on the world but capitalizes on chance. The second argues that exposure is a link between before taking the photograph and afterwards (Scott warns that this distinction is not absolute, for example Ansel Adams used the darkroom to intensify reality and digital photography is undermining the link between the real and photography). The second also argues that the shutter speed is so fast it separates photography from other media, and because of this, speed photography also uses chance. This links photography to Surrealism in that it has chance as a key element in its aesthetic. Scott cites Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag and Rosalind Krauss in support of this link. He quotes the photographer Edouard Boubat ‘ ‘‘I am surprised by the photos I find. I don’t make the landscape. It’s already there. I’m more surprised because I don’t do anything. All you have to do is open you eyes and release the shutter from time to time’’ ’ (p. 18).
