The previous post finished by asking:'  What then is poiesis that is uncovered by the twisting free and  the stepping back to the more or less hidden sources of the Leica street photography tradition?'

The  stepping back in the post was to a birth certificate of photography, namely   Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's earliest surviving camera photograph, circa 1826: View from the Window at Le Gras (Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France). It is a stepping back to photography's own mimetic presuppositions in preparation for an overcoming; a self-overcoming of photography  itself. This stepping back to is coupled to a  step forwards; that is the  photographic past from out of which we think is  re-appropriated and interpreted anew. It is re-interpreting the original  photographic presuppositions  as other to  the street photography tradition's   interpretations of the birth certificate of photography. 

The other that is uncovered is photography as poetics or poiesis. What then is poiesis?

The influential interpretation -- that of Benjamin mimetic faculty and behaviour and  Adorno's  adapation and assimilation to others  ---  is poiesis is mimesis with Adorno giving a historical account of the development of the various meanings  of mimesis that is counterpoised to, and been repressed by,  instrumental reason through the historical civilising process.  With Heidegger poiesis stands  opposed to the calculative constructions of technological enflaming in which being is reduced to a standing reserve or a resource ordered and controlled by the modern techno-sciences.This is an ontological reduction of things to their utility  and nature to a resource.     

 This reflection on the poetic (or poietic, to use the Greek term)  refers to Aristotle's conception of poiesis as making or producing things and the conception of artistic creation and  craftwork that is oriented to the horizon of production. The process of making is definite: it has a definite beginning: the blue print of the product. It has a definite end: the completion of the product. For Aristotle, the end of poiesis is beyond poiesis itself since the finished product is always for someone and something, for the use to which it can be put.  

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This image was made whilst I was on a photoshoot early one Sunday morning in 2015. I was still living in Sturt St in the city then, so I could easily walk to and around the CBD.  

 My urban photography----here, here and here--- has come to a standstill now that I am living on the southern coast in the Fleurieu Peninsula.  

The heyday of the Leica photography  was 1930 to 1980, a period when the Leica M rangefinder  reigned supreme as the best performing 35mm camera-system for snapshots, reportage and street photography that rested on the principles of craft.   Today Leica, as a  small-scale camera maker  in the digital age,  with its shortening of product cycles,  has  become a niche product for the cognoscenti and a select group of professionals.

 Being ‘critically sharp’ is no longer a standard feature of Leica photographs, nor is  the M digital  camera unique in its compactness or unobtrusiveness or ease of use, as these are also characteristics of the Sony Alpha mirrorless  cameras. The latter can also produce the desired qualities of a picture--qualities as tonality, crispness of fine detail in the midtones, separation of highlight and shadow detail and depth preservation-- and they can use the M + R Leica lenses, which are some of the best lenses ever made. Digital gives photographers  more resources and it evens the playing field.

The  cognoscenti and a select group of professionals include art photographers who continue to use old media technology such as 35m film  in reaction to the  in-your-face, super-saturated, super-contrasty glossy imagery that appears to be the digital norm in photography.  Film, it is argued,  has a different aesthetic---a different look that is softer and grainer---  and it remains more craft-based with a slowness of process. Though digital has a different look to film ---its much more crisp and clean---photographic software can mimic the look of film.  Digital has developed an ‘analogue aesthetic.’ 

Continuing to use 35m film in a digital world  is not limited to grandparents and hipsters hooked on retro,   as it is also grounded in nostalgia for a different world; one in which there was a strong tradition in precision engineering, optical technology,  photography and quality cameras.  One aspect of this nostalgic reaction is a flight away from the complex problematics of a period of crisis and toward the cosy certainties of an earlier age;  another is the rejection of the recombinant media strategies of re-use, appropriation, media-critique, re-presentation, cut-up, “deconstruction,” etc. (often all lumped under the umbrella term: “post-modernism”); another strand  is the desire for purity in reaction to consumerism and the slick digital surface.      

Is this the emergence of a post digital aesthetic that attempts to transgress the shiny facade of a technology promising perfection but which has lots of glitches and bugs in practice including the  deficiencies of digital files?  A post digital aesthetic no longer considers digitalness revolutionary,  and the term “post-digital” best functions  as a descriptor of the reaction of arts to the cultural impact of digitization, rather than  implying  only one single moment of a historical break.