Look a Little (Chuck) Closer: Aesthetic Attention and the Contact Phenomenon

Anscomb, Claire ORCID: 0000-0001-6808-6646 (2022) Look a Little (Chuck) Closer: Aesthetic Attention and the Contact Phenomenon. British Journal of Aesthetics, 62 (3). pp. 475-492.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayab050

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>There is a sustained phenomenological tradition of describing the character of photographic pictorial experience to consist in part of a feeling of contact with the subject of the photograph. Philosophers disagree, however, about the exact cause of the ‘contact phenomenon’ and whether there is a difference in the phenomenal character between the pictorial experiences of photographs and handmade pictures so that, if a viewer mistakes the type that a token image belongs to, their sense of contact can alter. I argue that the contact phenomenon is contingent upon, and triggered by, the viewer’s perceptual experience of the image, which may be subject to change depending upon how a viewer attends to an image. I develop a hybrid account to resolve how the perceptual and cognitive aspects of a viewer’s experience interact and produce the complex phenomenology, including conflicting mental states, that a viewer can undergo during the described experiences.</jats:p>

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	21 Mar 2023 09:10
Last Modified:	21 Mar 2023 09:10
DOI:	10.1093/aesthj/ayab050
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3169180