The Photographic Registration of Holistic and Distinctive Features, and Dismantling an Ontological Misnomer in Photography: the "Latent Image"

This paper explores an expanded perspective on the relationship between photons and the photographic process through various articulations in the field of optics and photonics. By examining spatial and temporal modes of photon propagation this work illuminates a more complete understanding of image-data acquisition-sequences in photographic devices. This framework, which I term the photon-photography relationship, examines the constituents listing the "register" as described in Dawn M. Wilson's essay "Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography." Central to this examination is electromagnetic energy (photons of light) – where I introduce "light-energy indices" - the variables associated with spatial and temporal frequency, and optical irradiances are necessarily foundational in acquiring and transporting characteristic features of the photographed subject. I offer we expand our thinking to recognize that determinate (holistic and distinctive) features are the constituents that formalize the register and propose 'light-energy indices' be interpreted as "structured patterns of light" that are not yet in a state to be observed. This necessarily supports the absence of an actual latent image, which is a mainstay Wilson argues in her work and is widely contemplated elsewhere (see, Wilson (née Phillips 2009), 2021, 2022, 2023; Lopes, 2016; Windsor 2023) and thus I establish that the 'register' is fundamentally an "Optical Inscription". By bringing more prominence to the constituents of photons propagating through space toward their ultimate destination to list the 'register', I argue, better accommodates the causal mediation between identifying features of the photographed subject and the structured patterns of light that formalize a register.