Andre Bazin's 'Ontology of the Photographic Image': Representation, Desire, and Presence

This dissertation offers a new interpretation of the influential 1945 essay "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" by French film critic Andre Bazin. A close textual analysis is performed in which it is shown that Bazin's essay assesses the comparative value of painting, photography, and cinema in relation to three discrete representational ideals: mimetic depiction ("the obsession with resemblance"), psychological gratification ("the need to defeat time"), and spiritual presence ("aesthetic revelation"). It is argued that Bazin views each ideal as articulating a distinct relationship between human desire and the concept of presence, within which the technology of photography and cinema play a unique role.;Bazin's three criteria of mimetic representation, psychological gratification, and spiritual revelation are each considered in detail. Each is characterized as having its own social, cultural, and historical mythology. The "obsession with resemblance" is presented as invoking the epistemological ideals of Cartesian rationalism. It is shown that Bazin demonstrates the mechanical objectivity of photography and cinema to be superior to the inherent subjectivity of painting. The "need to defeat time" concerns photography and cinema's ability to arouse the beholder's fundamental desire for the presence of absent things. This is explicated by way of a reading of Sartre's L'Imaginaire and Barthes's Camera Lucida. In "aesthetic revelation," Bazin is shown to demonstrate that photography and cinema surpass the capacity of painting to reveal spiritual reality. This is explicated by way of a reading of Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art.;The publication history of "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" in French and English is summarized and a comparison is made of the two extant French versions. A historical overview of interpretations of the essay in English-language film theory is provided, with emphasis on its use in the development of the concept of cinematic realism. Close consideration is given to the essay's importance for the critique of ideology in film theory, and for the contemporary theory of photographic indexicality. It is argued that English-language interpretations of the essay have overlooked Bazin's strategy of using three separate criteria to conduct a comparative evaluation of painting, photography, and cinema.