Photography and the Index

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 1914), an American mathematician, theorist, and logician, is
credited with developing the term index, as we are concerned with it here. The term is part of
his theory of signs, an effort to categorize different modes of representation. You can find more
on Peirce here.
For the purposes of this class, it is important that you understand how the term index relates to
the medium of photography. In the most general terms, the index, as Peirce used the word, refers
to a kind of sign that represents its object independently of any resemblance to them. Indices are
physically connected to their objects but are not, strictly speaking, part of these objects. Classic
examples are shadows (which emanate from a specific body but are not a part of that body) and a
weathervane (which indicates the direction of the wind but is not the wind itself). Indices point to
objects and indicate their presence. Indices are to be distinguished from "iconic" signs, another of
Peirces classifications, which refer to an object through resemblance rather than through a
physical connection (eg. a drawing of a cat refers to a cat.)There are contradictions in Peirces
theory, and his concept of the index is not always entirely clear. You need not know the minutiae
of his ideas. It is most important for you to grasp the general concept of the index.
The term index has been used to describe photography because it helps to articulate the
connection between a photograph and its source. Photographs, in a sense, have a kind of
connection to their subjects. This connection is literal in terms of the way that photographs
(before the digital era) were created through the interaction of light with objects. It is also a
theoretical and conceptual connection, which is manifested in the way that we speak of
photographic truth. Photographs have a certain reality quotient; there is a sense that what we
are seeing in the picture is in some way realistic, accurate, or truthful, because photographs
picture things that exist materially (even if they refer to abstract ideas).
As you progress through this course, you will see the term index and indexical crop up in the
readings. When you see these terms, think about how and why the writer is using them. How does
the writer understand the indexicality of the photograph? What about this quality do they value,
or what about it do they question? Moreover, why might photographers want to either embrace or
deconstruct photographys indexicality? What are the historical implications of their gestures? As
we have seen in this course, people have, at different times in history, both prized the indexical
qualities of the medium and actively questioned its truth claims. They have consciously
constructed photographs that read as indexical (think OSullivans quantitative photographs of
cacti), or they have troubled photographys indexicality by focusing on the accidents involved in
the processes of photography (think Camerons portraits). Also consider, however, that
photographys indexicality and its fictional qualities exist in a dialectical relationship. In other
words, photographs are a blend of truth and fiction, reality and artifice. You might think about
how these terms come into play in our own time, with the development of digital photography
and increasing accessibility of photographic images.
Further reading:
Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson, Photographys Double Index (A Short History in Three
Parts), in The Meaning of Photography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981).
Anne Collins Goodyear, The Portrait, the Photograph, and the Index, in Photography Theory,
edited by James Elkins, The Art Seminar, Vol. 2, 211-5, 385-88