Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (7)

Against Imprinting: The Photographic Image as a Source of Evidence (2022)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. M. (in press). Against Imprinting: The Photographic Image as a Source of Evidence. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 89(4),

A photographic image is said to provide evidence of a photographed scene because it is a causal imprint of reflected light: an indexical trace of real objects and events. Though widely established in the history, theory and philosophy of photography,... Read More about Against Imprinting: The Photographic Image as a Source of Evidence.

Reflecting, Registering, Recording and Representing: From Light Image to Photographic Picture (2022)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. (2022). Reflecting, Registering, Recording and Representing: From Light Image to Photographic Picture. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 122(2), 141-164. https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoac008

Photography is valued as a medium for recording and visually reproducing features of the world. I seek to challenge the view that photography is fundamentally a recording process and that every photograph is a record — a view that I claim is based on... Read More about Reflecting, Registering, Recording and Representing: From Light Image to Photographic Picture.

Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography (2021)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. M. (2021). Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 79(2), 161-174. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpab005

Some photographs show determinate features of a scene because the photographed scene had those features. This dependency relation is, rightly, a consensus in philosophy of photography. I seek to refute many long-established theories of photography by... Read More about Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography.

Facing the camera: Self-portraits of photographers as artists (2012)
Journal Article
Wilson, D. M. (2012). Facing the camera: Self-portraits of photographers as artists. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 70(1), 56-66. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2011.01498.x

Self-portrait photography presents an elucidatory range of cases for investigating the relationship between automatism and artistic agency in photography-a relationship that is seen as a problem in the philosophy of art. I discuss self-portraits by p... Read More about Facing the camera: Self-portraits of photographers as artists.

Fixing the image : re-thinking the 'mind-independence' of photographs (2009)
Journal Article
Phillips, D. M. (2009). Fixing the image : re-thinking the 'mind-independence' of photographs. Postgraduate journal of aesthetics, 6(2), 1-22

It has been argued that photographs are unsuitable or inferior candidates for art because they are not intimately bound to the mind of an artist. I believe that we can address scepticism in the philosophy of art only if we recognise that it is linked... Read More about Fixing the image : re-thinking the 'mind-independence' of photographs.

Photography and causation: Responding to Scruton's scepticism (2009)
Journal Article
Phillips, D. M. (2009). Photography and causation: Responding to Scruton's scepticism. British Journal of Aesthetics, 49(4), 327-340. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayp036

According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton's scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these... Read More about Photography and causation: Responding to Scruton's scepticism.