Forgotten Technologies – and Why They Sometimes Return

Foreword

This text is not written as an argument for or against particular technologies. It follows neither a nostalgic impulse nor a technocritical agenda. Its point of departure is a practical observation: different technical procedures realise different forms of perception, decision-making and experience.

Digital photography and AI-based post-processing have opened domains that were scarcely conceivable with analogue techniques. In sports, reportage or rapidly changing situations, moments can be fixed whose temporal precision and dynamics would have been unthinkable in analogue practice. The subsequent analysis of large image sets also makes it possible, with the help of artificial intelligence, to expose the core of an image – what is intended to be conveyed.

At the same time, it becomes apparent that these procedures foster forms of experience different from those grounded in limitation, materiality and immediate decision. For contemplative subjects – landscapes, quiet spaces, situations without external time pressure – analogue techniques fundamentally change the photographic process. Their technical constraints enforce selection, presence and decision at the moment of exposure. Perception, body and situation are bound together more tightly than is possible through subsequent optimisation.

This essay proceeds from this difference. It does not discuss technology as such, but rather the states that technology realises, shifts or displaces. Concepts such as resonance, entropy, coherence and entanglement are not introduced theoretically, but developed from photographic practice.

The text is addressed to readers who work with technology or reflect upon it, and who sense that optimisation does not, in every context, lead to deeper experience. It is intended as a contribution to New Territory of Thinking – an invitation to consider technologies not only by their results, but by the forms of experience they give shape to.

1. The Moment Before the Exposure

I stand before the landscape, without an image yet.
The sky is clear, a deep blue, beneath it fields and water reflecting the last light. This is not a fleeting glance, but a pause. The viewfinder rises slowly to the eye – not to capture, but to test. Foreground, middle ground and background separate. Lines become visible that were previously diffuse: a shoreline leading into the scene, a ridge holding the horizon, a disturbance at the edge that unsettles the composition.

The actual work begins here. Not with the camera, but with perception. Colours are weighed against one another, not abstractly, but bodily: blue against orange, cool against warm. I shift my position slightly, a step to the left, then back again. The frame tightens, the unnecessary falls away. With every exclusion the scene grows calmer, more ordered. The multitude of possible images contracts to a few conceivable ones.

At some point – and this moment cannot be forced – an alignment occurs. What I see in the viewfinder corresponds to what I had been seeking inwardly. The lines hold, the object sits, the image space is tense without being overloaded. The golden section is not a rule, but a stability that asserts itself. In this instant nothing can be altered without losing something essential. The scene has become coherent.

The shutter release is almost incidental.
The image does not come into being with the click, but in the state that precedes it.
Bound to it are elements that will never appear on the film or sensor: the warmth of the sun on the skin, the wind, the smell of the surroundings, the silence between two thoughts. All of this is entangled in that moment – and for precisely this reason it cannot be reproduced.

2. Resonance – When Inside and Outside Converge

What happens in this moment can be described as resonance. Not metaphorically, but as a precise process of attunement. The landscape is initially simply there – abundant, ambiguous, full of simultaneous possibilities. The inner image, by contrast, is still indistinct, a movement of searching. Resonance does not occur at the beginning, but in the course of approach.

With every slight shift, the relation between what is seen and what is sought changes. Colours gain meaning only in relation to one another. Lines exert their effect not in isolation, but through their interplay. Resonance is not a single feature of the image, but a relational state.

Decisive is this: resonance cannot be planned. It is neither purely subjective nor objectively given. It arises between perception and scene. The viewfinder functions not merely as a frame, but as an instrument of condensation. It enforces decision. Everything outside the frame loses relevance, and the image space gains clarity.

Resonance marks the transition from observation to participation. I no longer stand opposite the landscape, but am bound into it. This state is fragile. It cannot be held, only recognised. Once it is reached, it demands decision.

3. Entropy and Order – Why Photography Means Selection

A landscape is a state of high entropy. Everything is present at once: forms, colours, movements, sounds, shifts of light. Photography therefore does not begin with recording, but with reduction.

Every decision – position, focal length, framing – reduces entropy. Possibilities are excluded. Order does not arise through addition, but through deliberate omission. Only through this limitation does the image become legible.

Analogue photography intensifies this process. Limited film stock acts as a constant resistance to arbitrariness. Each exposure counts. Decision cannot be delegated – neither to statistics nor to later selection. It must be realised in the moment.

Digital photography shifts this point. Entropy is initially tolerated or even produced in order to be reduced later. Series replace decision with hope. Order is realised retrospectively. What is lost is not the image itself, but the state from which it emerged.

AI-based post-processing sharpens this shift further. Disturbing elements can be removed so precisely that the image space appears to close seamlessly. Order is realised without ever having been experienced. Entropy is reduced computationally, not situationally. The result may be convincing – but it is detached from the moment of decision.

4. Coherence – The Point Without Alternative

Resonance, entropy reduction and decision condense into a state of maximal coherence. Coherence is not an ideal of the image, but a correspondence between perception, imagination, body and situation.

This state is reached when no equivalent alternative remains. Not because everything is perfect, but because any further change would destroy something essential. Coherence is not an optimum, but a fixed point.

In analogue practice this state is temporally bound. It exists only at the moment of exposure. Afterwards it dissolves. The image remains, but coherence as a state does not. For this reason the moment of decision carries weight. It cannot be corrected, delegated or reconstructed.

Digital processes can simulate coherence. They can realise closed, harmonious images. Yet this coherence is structurally different. It arises from adaptation to models, not from alignment between inside and outside. It knows no decision, because it had no alternative.

5. Entanglement – What Remains in the Image, and What Is Lost

At the moment of maximal coherence the image is entangled with its context of emergence. Perception, body and environment form a single event. The image is not a reproduction, but a trace.

When the photographic process is decoupled – through series shooting, retrospective selection or AI reconstruction – this entanglement dissolves. The time of experience and the time of decision fall apart. The image remains; the state is lost.

One may remember. One may reconstruct. But memory does not replace entanglement. The image becomes a trigger of recollection, no longer the bearer of a jointly experienced state.

Analogue procedures enforce entanglement. They are fragile, but complete. It is precisely in this fragility that their strength lies.

Conclusion – Technology, Nature and Experience

Not every technology disappears because it is obsolete, and not every one returns because it is more efficient. Some lose their place because the conditions under which they once realised meaningful experience no longer exist. Others remain or return because they stabilise states that have become fragile in an accelerated world.

Digital procedures and AI realise new forms of analysis, condensation and visibility. They alter, however, the temporal structure of decision and experience. Resonance, coherence and entanglement are not abolished, but displaced.

Analogue procedures operate under opposite conditions. Their materiality, limitation and resistance compel presence. They lie closer to the conditions of human existence: finitude, temporality, corporeality. When we work with them, we act within our nature. Correspondingly, the results carry this proximity within them.

The difference does not lie in the image, but in the state from which it arises.

What emerges from proximity to human nature carries more reality within it than what has merely been optimised.

Theory note

Note on theoretical context
The concepts used in this essay — resonance, coherence, entropy and entanglement — are part of the Theory of Quantum Monads, which is developed systematically on tenckhoff.eu .

The modules XQM, VQM, IEQ and XDM form the formal framework of Quantum Monadics, within which the experiences described here can be situated conceptually.

This text is intended as a phenomenological approach to these structures from practice.

Note:
This essay was republished by the German Society for Photography (DGPh) on its official website: 
Die vergessenen Technologien – und warum sie manchmal zurückkehren (DGPh)