Theory of Micro-Phase Differences “The Present” and the Multiplicity of Perception in Photography
Theory of Micro-Phase Differences
“The Present” and the Multiplicity of Perception in Photography
Kyoto University of the Arts, Graduate School of Arts
Department of Art Studies, Photography and Moving Image
Yoshiro Shinkawa
1. Introduction — Is There Only One “Present”?
We ordinarily think of the “present” as a single temporal point. The past has already passed, the future has not yet arrived, and only the present exists as what is actually present. But does the present that we actually experience really exist as a single point?
For example, suppose that we photograph a landscape in front of us. The photograph appears to record the moment at which it was taken. Yet, by the time we look at the photograph, the moment of exposure and the moment of viewing have already become different. Furthermore, a certain amount of time is required for the light emitted or reflected by the object to reach the camera. Thus, in the act of viewing a photograph, multiple temporalities are involved: the moment of exposure, the arrival of light, the moment of recording, the moment of development or display, and the moment of viewing.
Of course, it does not follow immediately from this that “the physical delay of light determines the human experience of time.” Time in physics and time in phenomenology belong to different levels. This paper does not seek to integrate them into a single causal theory.
Rather, what I wish to examine is the fact that the present is not necessarily given as a perfectly coincident single point. Whether in physical observation, perception, or the experience of viewing photographs, the present is constituted through relationships among multiple conditions and phases.
This paper approaches this problem through the concept of the micro-phase difference.
A micro-phase difference is not simply a temporal difference. It refers to a state in which two different conditions are almost identical yet do not completely coincide, and in which that difference becomes related within perception.
This concept has two aspects. The first is a theoretical aspect: understanding the present not as a single temporal point but as a perceptual and relational field in which multiple phases overlap. The second is a practical aspect: making this structure perceptible through photography.
In this paper, the latter is called paired composition.
Paired composition does not simply mean placing two photographs side by side. It is a method in which two photographs retain a sufficient degree of identity while being arranged so that they do not completely coincide, thereby allowing the viewer to experience the difference between them itself.
At this point, the problem of the “third screen” becomes important. However, the third screen is neither a third photograph nor a third image existing between A and B. In this paper, the term is used provisionally to indicate a perceptual process that cannot be reduced to a fixed image of the relationship between the two photographs.
In this respect, the present study concerns not only photographic theory but also questions of temporality, phenomenology, and perceptual psychology, while also coming into contact with the problem of Derrida’s différance (Derrida, 1972).
2. Research Objectives and Method
The purpose of this study is to reconsider the conventional understanding that “photography freezes a moment” and to reconsider temporal experience in photography from the perspective of relations among phases.
For this purpose, this paper distinguishes three levels.
The first is the physical level. The transmission of light and the act of observation involve finite amounts of time, and the observed object and the present from which it is observed never completely coincide. However, this physical fact is not treated as the direct basis of phenomenological time.
The second is the level of perception and consciousness. Drawing on Husserl’s concepts of retention and protention in internal time-consciousness, as well as Bergson’s concept of duration, this paper considers how the present is not experienced simply as a single point (Husserl, 1928; Bergson, 1889).
The third is the level of photographic practice. Through paired composition, in which two photographs are combined, this study examines the perceptual difference that emerges from the relationship between two still images.
Accordingly, the method of this paper is not to forcibly integrate physics, phenomenology, and photographic history into a single theoretical system. Rather, it distinguishes these different levels while allowing them to illuminate one another through the common question of how complete simultaneity and complete coincidence can be established.
3. Definition of the Micro-Phase Difference
In this paper, a micro-phase difference is defined not as a simple temporal difference between two different conditions, but as a difference that emerges when multiple phases, retaining their identity while not completely coinciding, become related within perception.
The term “micro” does not merely indicate that the difference is quantitatively small. Rather, it concerns a perceptual threshold at which the difference has not yet been separated out as a single, clearly identifiable meaning.
If two photographs are completely different, the viewer recognizes them as separate photographs. Conversely, if they are completely identical, there is no need to compare them. The micro-phase difference becomes significant in the intermediate condition.
The two photographs may depict the same object, the same location, or maintain the same composition. Yet some condition—light, position, the body, time, or the gaze—does not completely coincide. As a result, the viewer simultaneously recognizes “the same thing” and “something different.”
This relation of “being the same while not being the same” constitutes the basic condition of the micro-phase difference.
Therefore, a micro-phase difference is not a unit for measuring time. It is a concept for describing the manner in which temporal change appears within perception.
4. Light and Observation — The Position of Physical Temporal Difference
When considering photography, the finite speed of light cannot be ignored.
The object we see is not given to us in perfect simultaneity with the object itself. A certain amount of time is required for light emitted or reflected by the object to reach the eye or the camera.
At everyday distances, this difference is almost imperceptible. In principle, however, the object that we think we are seeing “now” is already in a slightly earlier state.
Photography makes this problem more complicated. A camera does not directly preserve the object itself; rather, it records the light that has arrived from the object.
However, caution is necessary here. The physical temporal difference produced by the delay of light and the temporal structure experienced by consciousness are not the same thing.
In this paper, the problem of light is not introduced to explain the cause of phenomenological time. Rather, it is positioned as one condition demonstrating that the concept of the “present” does not necessarily presuppose perfect simultaneity.
In other words, physical temporal difference and perceptual time are distinct. Yet they share a common problem-setting in that the observed and the present from which it is observed do not completely coincide.
This non-coincidence provides the starting point from which the present study considers these different levels in relation to one another.
5. Phenomenological Time — Husserl’s Retention and Protention
Time experience is an important problem in Edmund Husserl’s analysis of internal time-consciousness.
When listening to music, we do not hear only the note that is sounding at the present moment. The note that has just sounded is not experienced as something that has simply disappeared. Rather, it remains present to consciousness in a particular manner. At the same time, anticipation of the note that is about to come also participates in the experience.
Husserl’s concepts of retention and protention demonstrate that the present cannot be understood as an isolated point (Husserl, 1928).
The present is neither a moment from which the past has been completely separated nor a point from which the future has been entirely excluded. Within the present itself, there is a relation to what has just occurred and to what is about to occur.
This point is important for the theory of micro-phase differences.
However, this paper does not identify the micro-phase difference with retention or protention. Husserl’s analysis concerns the constitution of time in consciousness, whereas the micro-phase difference is a concept for describing the relation among multiple states in photography.
The two are therefore not treated as identical concepts. They are connected through the common problem of understanding the present as something constituted relationally rather than as a single point.
6. Bergson’s Duration — A Tension with the Micro-Phase Difference
In this paper, Bergson is not positioned simply as a theoretical supporter. Rather, he is a thinker who raises a fundamental question for paired composition itself.
Bergson’s concept of duration (durée) is deeply related to his criticism of treating time as though it were space and could therefore be divided and arranged into separate units (Bergson, 1889).
Dividing time into 10:00, 10:01, 10:02, and so forth may be useful for measurement. Yet time as it is experienced in consciousness is not necessarily experienced as a collection of discrete points arranged alongside one another.
From this perspective, paired composition, which places two photographs A and B side by side, may initially appear to be precisely the kind of procedure criticized by Bergson.
It divides time into two static states.
Therefore, it cannot simply be claimed that “placing two photographs side by side expresses duration.”
Here, this paper takes a rather paradoxical position.
Paired composition does not represent duration itself through two photographs. Rather, by deliberately juxtaposing two still images, it attempts to generate a perceptual change that cannot be reduced to either image alone.
In other words, it does not decompose time into still images. Instead, it attempts to generate, from still images, an experience that cannot itself be divided into fixed temporal points.
Here lies the tension between paired composition and Bergson’s concept of duration.
The two photographs are spatially separated. Yet the relationship between them cannot be filled in by a single, fixed third image. This inability to “fill the gap” becomes an important experience in paired composition.
7. The Decomposition of Movement in Photographic History — Muybridge and Marey
Photography has historically been used to make time and movement visible.
The sequential photographs of Eadweard Muybridge decomposed the movements of running horses and human bodies into multiple still images. Étienne-Jules Marey likewise used photographic techniques to analyze movement (Muybridge, 1887; Marey, 1878).
Here, it is important not to confuse the meaning of “movement” in these historical practices with the problem of perception addressed by paired composition.
Muybridge and Marey primarily dealt with the physical movement of objects. Continuous bodily movement was divided into multiple moments that could be observed as A, B, C, D, and so forth. This is a movement from continuous physical motion toward multiple still images.
Paired composition, by contrast, proceeds in the opposite direction: from two still images toward a perceptual fluctuation generated through their relation.
The term “fluctuation” here does not mean that the object itself is moving. It is a provisional term used to describe the condition in which the perception of the viewer, comparing two still images, cannot reduce their relationship to a single fixed meaning.
Therefore, this paper does not treat “fluctuation” as an independent entity or object.
8. Gestalt Psychology and Ambiguous Figures
When considering this problem of perception, the similarity with ambiguous figures in Gestalt psychology cannot be ignored.
In figures such as the Necker cube and Rubin’s vase, a single visual stimulus can permit multiple perceptual organizations, and the perceived organization may alternate during observation.
This phenomenon and paired composition share an important characteristic. Neither can be understood as a simple one-to-one correspondence between visual stimulus and perception.
However, the two should not be identified with one another.
In ambiguous figures, the fundamental issue is the possibility of multiple perceptual interpretations within a single visual stimulus. In paired composition, by contrast, each of the two photographs already exists as an individual image. What becomes problematic is not the reinterpretation of one image into another meaning, but the way in which the two images themselves are perceived in relation to one another.
Thus, whereas an ambiguous figure involves a fluctuation of perceptual interpretation within a single image, paired composition involves a fluctuation of the phase relation between two images.
This distinction makes it possible to avoid treating paired composition simply as a photographic version of the ambiguous figure.
Here again, “fluctuation” does not refer to a fixed psychological state. It is a provisional term for describing a change within perception.
9. Paired Composition — What Emerges from Two Still Images?
Paired composition is not established merely by placing two photographs side by side.
What is important is that a certain degree of identity is maintained between the two images. They may depict the same place, the same object, similar compositions, or share common forms or light. Yet they do not completely coincide.
The difference does not necessarily have to be a dramatic event. The position of a person may have changed slightly. The direction of light may be subtly different. The condition of the surface of the water may have changed. Or a person may simply have disappeared.
The smaller these differences are, the more difficult it becomes for the viewer to process the two images simply as separate photographs.
A exists as A, and B exists as B. Yet after seeing A and then B, the way A was initially seen itself changes. When the viewer returns to A, it is now seen as A after having seen B.
What occurs here is not that a third image exists within photograph A. Nor is there a hidden third image within photograph B. Rather, the act of perception that relates A and B does not converge completely into a single fixed object.
10. The “Third Screen” — Not an Image but an Unfixed Process
At this point, the concept of the “third screen” emerges.
Yet the term itself contains a problem from the outset. The moment it is called a “third screen,” it may be imagined as a third image that is neither A nor B.
For example, suppose that a person appears in A but not in B, and the viewer imagines that “the person has walked away.” If this imagined event is fixed as a single completed scene, it ultimately amounts to creating a new third still image between A and B. This is precisely what the present study seeks to avoid.
Therefore, the third screen is not a third image. It is a provisional name for a perceptual process that cannot be fixed as an image when the viewer perceives the relationship between A and B.
What is important here is not to treat the third screen as something that exists. The moment the third screen is extracted as an independent object, it becomes another still image, contradicting the premise of the concept itself.
Thus, the moment the third screen is fixed, it ceases to be the third screen.
This paradox is not merely a play on words. It points to the central problem of this paper: the experience of viewing photographs cannot necessarily be completely fixed as a single object.
11. On the Term “Fluctuation”
The same problem applies to the term “fluctuation.”
The moment we name something “perceptual fluctuation,” we can begin to treat “fluctuation” as though it were a single psychological state that exists independently. But this is not what the term means in this paper.
It is a provisional term used to describe the fact that the relationship between two photographs cannot be reduced to a single fixed image. Therefore, fluctuation itself cannot be extracted and treated as an independent object.
One sees A. One sees B. One returns to A. Each time, the meaning or relation of A and B does not necessarily return to exactly the same state.
This change is what is provisionally called “fluctuation.” It does not mean that a third object called fluctuation exists inside the viewer.
What matters here is not confusing the name with the phenomenon. What this paper seeks to address is not a named object, but a changing relation that cannot be completely recovered by naming.
12. Structural Similarity with Derrida’s Différance
This problem also has a structural similarity to Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance.
Différance, incorporating both difference and deferral, challenges the assumption that meaning can be completely actualized and fixed as something fully present (Derrida, 1972).
Here the similarity with the third screen becomes apparent. The third screen, too, loses its unfixed character the moment it is named as a single object.
However, the two cannot be treated as the same theory. Derrida’s principal concern is the generation of difference and meaning in language and signs. The present paper, by contrast, concerns the relationship between photographs as visual images.
The relationship between the third screen and différance should therefore be understood not as a direct theoretical identity but as a structural similarity. In both cases, an attempt to fix something encounters something that escapes that fixation.
What matters for this paper is not to present the theory of micro-phase differences as an invention or repetition of différance. Rather, the connection with existing philosophical discussions makes it possible to recognize the methodological contradiction within the present theory itself: the contradiction of naming something that cannot be completely named.
13. The Third Screen and Bergson
The problem of the third screen also connects again with Bergson’s concept of duration.
From a Bergsonian perspective, there is a problem in understanding duration as a collection of fixed points. Accordingly, the third screen cannot be considered something that exists between A and B. If a third screen existed as an independent entity, it would itself become another fixed state, dividing time into A, the third screen, and B.
Therefore, this paper does not conceive of the third screen as something existing between A and B.
The term “third screen” is used only to indicate the impossibility of fixing the relation between A and B.
In this sense, paired composition does not reproduce Bergson’s duration through photography. Rather, it uses a spatial form consisting of two still images in an attempt to generate an experience that cannot be fully captured by that spatial division (Bergson, 1889).
Here lies the paradox of paired composition.
Two still images are used not to create a third still image, but to generate an experience that cannot be reduced to a still image.
14. Micro-Phase Difference and Identity/Difference
At this point, the quality of being “micro” becomes important.
If the difference between A and B is extremely large, the viewer recognizes that they are looking at two different photographs. For example, if the same location is photographed during the day and at night, the difference is clear.
In a micro-phase difference, however, the two photographs maintain a certain degree of identity. Consequently, the viewer cannot simply abandon the recognition that they are looking at “the same thing.” At the same time, because the two photographs are not completely identical, they cannot be closed off as simply “the same thing.”
Here, a condition emerges in which identity and difference are simultaneously present.
A micro-phase difference is a concept for making this condition perceptible through photography.
In this sense, “micro” is not merely a quantitative term. It refers to a perceptual boundary in which the difference is not large enough to be recognized as an independent and separate thing, yet is not so small that it can be absorbed into complete identity.
15. Photographic Practice at the Ariake Sea
This theory has not been derived solely from abstract philosophical consideration.
Through many years of photographing the tidal flats of the Ariake Sea, I have repeatedly encountered differences between two photographs that appear almost identical but that contain differences that cannot be completely explained.
A tidal flat is not a fixed landscape. Tidal level, light, clouds, wind, the condition of the water surface and mud, and human activity are continuously changing. Yet these changes are not necessarily dramatic. The identity of the place is maintained while it is never completely the same.
This experience became an important impetus for considering the concept of the micro-phase difference.
Viewed alone, each photograph exists as a landscape photograph. Yet when it is placed beside another photograph taken under almost identical conditions, the meaning and temporal position of the first photograph itself changes.
What matters is not simply information such as “how many minutes later the second photograph was taken.” Rather, it is the slight non-coincidence that becomes visible only through comparison.
This non-coincidence allows time in photography to be experienced as something different from simple clock time.
16. Paired Composition Does Not Represent Time
From the preceding discussion, it becomes problematic to define paired composition simply as a “method of representing time.”
If A is assigned to the past and B to the present, the two photographs merely display a temporal axis spatially. This may be a method of translating time into space, but it does not necessarily address duration itself.
What matters in paired composition is not fixing A and B as “past” and “present.” After seeing A, B appears differently; after seeing B, A appears differently. Therefore, the experience cannot be explained solely by a one-directional temporal relation in which one is the past and the other the present.
Paired composition concerns not the temporal difference between two photographs, but the relationship through which the two photographs alter each other’s presentness.
In this sense, paired composition is not a method of depicting time. It is a method of questioning how time itself becomes constituted within perception.
17. Paired Composition as a Theory of Practice
The theory of micro-phase differences does not aim only at ontological or theoretical claims. It also has significance as a method of photographic production. At its center lies paired composition.
In paired composition, two photographs are first produced. Next, the degree of identity and difference between them is examined. Finally, they are arranged as a single work.
What matters here is that neither photograph A nor photograph B is made the sole protagonist. The meaning of the work cannot be attributed completely to either A or B. The relationship between the two images itself constitutes the viewing experience.
However, the “relationship itself” is not exhibited as a third object. What is physically exhibited remains the two photographs. The third screen may provisionally arise within the perception of the viewer, but it cannot be fixed as an independent element of the artwork.
In this sense, paired composition maintains a tension between the physical structure of the work and the experience of viewing it.
18. Photography and the “Third Screen”
In photographic works, the distance between two photographs can also be important.
Whether the two photographs are placed close together or separated by a certain distance changes the movement of the viewer’s gaze. However, here again, the third screen should not be treated as physical space. The fact that there is an empty space between two photographs does not mean that the empty space itself becomes the third screen.
What matters is that the arrangement, including the empty space, causes the viewer’s gaze to move back and forth between A and B, and that the relationship between them is renewed each time.
Therefore, the “interval” in exhibition space must be distinguished between physical space and perceptual interval. Physical empty space can be measured. Perceptual interval cannot be measured as a single object.
This distinction also prevents the third screen from being reduced to a simple spatial feature of exhibition.
19. The Circulation Between Practice and Theory
This study does not assume a one-directional relationship in which theory exists first and is subsequently applied to photographic practice.
Rather, it emphasizes a circular process: photographing, discovering differences, problematizing them, conceptualizing them, producing new paired compositions, and problematizing them again.
A difference between two photographs that initially appears accidental may become a theoretical problem through repeated experience. Once this problem is conceptualized as a “micro-phase difference,” the method of photographing and combining new images changes. Further production then reveals phenomena that cannot be explained by the original theory.
This circulation positions the present research not simply as an application of philosophical concepts to photography, but as research that generates theory from photographic practice and reorganizes photographic practice through theory.
20. Digital Images and Multiple Presents
Digital photography further complicates this problem.
A single image can leave the place where it was photographed, be reproduced, and be displayed simultaneously on different devices and in different places. When the same image data exists on multiple screens, each viewer sees the same image within a different location, a different bodily condition, and a different time.
At this point, the identity of the “same photograph” can be maintained while the “present” in which it is viewed does not coincide. Digital images therefore expand the problem of identity and difference.
However, this paper does not make digital image theory an independent central theme. Digital technology itself does not produce micro-phase differences. Rather, digital images extend the problem addressed here insofar as the same image can be placed within multiple presents.
21. The Two-Layer Structure of the Theory
The preceding discussion makes clear that the theory of micro-phase differences has two layers.
The first is the theoretical and ontological layer.
This paper proposes a model in which the “present” is understood not as a single temporal point but as a perceptual and relational field in which multiple phases overlap and interact. This is not a claim about an absolute ontological truth concerning the temporal structure of the universe. It is a theoretical model for understanding the experience of the present in photography and perception.
The second is the practical and aesthetic layer.
Paired composition is a method of photographic production developed from this model. By arranging two still images so that identity and difference are simultaneously maintained, it seeks to produce in the viewer an experience of time that cannot be reduced to a fixed image.
Thus, the relationship can be stated as follows:
the theory of micro-phase differences = the theoretical model;
paired composition = the method through which this model is developed into photographic practice.
22. Scope and Limitations of the Theory
The theory proposed here has several limitations.
First, physical time, phenomenological time, and photographic time cannot be completely integrated into a single theory. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to claim the micro-phase difference as a universal fundamental unit applicable to the entire universe.
Second, the experience of ambiguous figures or perceptual alternation in perceptual psychology cannot be identified with the experience of paired composition. There is a structural similarity between them, but their object structures are different.
Third, the terms “third screen” and “fluctuation” are not phenomena in themselves. They are provisional words for describing perceptual experiences that cannot be reduced to fixed images. Therefore, the moment they are treated as independent entities or psychological objects, the theoretical premise of this paper becomes contradictory.
This self-limitation is not a weakness of the theory of micro-phase differences. Rather, it is an important methodological condition of the theory.
23. Redefining the “Present” in Photography
Photography is often understood as something that “stops a moment.”
Yet what a photograph stops is not time itself, but a relation between light and an object established under particular conditions.
When the photograph is viewed later, the time of exposure and the time of viewing are different. Furthermore, when the same photograph is placed beside another photograph, the meaning of the first photograph changes through the second.
Thus, the temporality of photography does not exist only within a single photograph. It also exists within the relationship between photograph and photograph, between photograph and viewer, and between the time of exposure and the time of viewing.
In this sense, photography can be understood not as a device that stops time, but as a device that preserves relations among different phases and makes those relations perceptible again.
Paired composition consciously makes use of this property.
This perspective also resonates with Barthes’s understanding of photography as deeply bound to temporal distance, presence, and absence (Barthes, 1980), while Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology emphasizes that perception cannot be separated from the embodied situation of the perceiver (Merleau-Ponty, 1945).
24. Conclusion — The Present Is Not a Single Point
This paper began by questioning the assumption that the “present” can be understood as a single temporal point.
In physical observation, the observed object and the present from which it is observed do not completely coincide. Yet physical temporal difference cannot be identified with phenomenological time.
Husserl’s analysis of internal time-consciousness demonstrates that the present has a relational structure involving retention and protention (Husserl, 1928).
Bergson’s concept of duration, on the other hand, is not simply a theoretical support for the present study. Rather, it introduces a fundamental tension into paired composition by questioning the division of time into spatially arranged points (Bergson, 1889).
Whereas Muybridge and Marey decomposed the physical movement of continuous objects into multiple still images, paired composition attempts to generate, from two still images, a perceptual change that cannot simply be reduced to a third still image (Muybridge, 1887; Marey, 1878).
The comparison with ambiguous figures in Gestalt psychology reveals another structural similarity concerning the instability of perceptual organization. Yet the two should not be identified. Whereas an ambiguous figure establishes multiple interpretations within a single image, paired composition addresses the relationship between two images.
Furthermore, the concept of the third screen is subject to a self-critical condition. The third screen is not a third image. It does not exist as an independent entity between A and B. Nor is “fluctuation” an independent object. These terms are provisional names for an experience in which the relationship between two photographs cannot be completely reduced to a fixed image.
This problem also has a structural similarity to Derrida’s concept of différance: the attempt to fix something encounters what escapes that fixation (Derrida, 1972). However, the present study does not claim that the theory of micro-phase differences is equivalent to Derrida’s theory. Its object is not linguistic signs but visual relations between photographs.
Thus, the theory of micro-phase differences is no longer simply a theory of “temporal difference.”
A micro-phase difference is a condition in which two different states retain a certain identity while not completely coinciding, and in which this non-coincidence is experienced as a relation within perception.
Paired composition is the photographic practice of presenting this micro-phase difference through the relationship between two photographs.
The third screen is a provisional name for the impossibility of fixing that relationship as a single image.
The central proposition of this paper can therefore be summarized as follows:
The present is not a single point.
The present can be understood not as an isolated temporal point but as a field in which multiple phases overlap and become constituted through their relations with one another.
Photography does not merely record this multiplicity. By placing two photographs together, it can produce within the viewer’s perception an “interval” that is not itself represented within either photograph.
Yet the moment this interval is fixed as a third image, it becomes once again a single static object. This is why the third screen is not an image.
It is something that attempts to become an image but never fully becomes one. It attempts to be fixed but cannot be fixed. It is named, yet cannot be completely recovered by that name.
This instability is an important characteristic of temporal experience within the theory of micro-phase differences.
Photography does not stop time.
Rather, between two images that have been stopped, photography can generate an experience that itself cannot be stopped.
At that moment, photography becomes not merely a medium for preserving the past, but a field in which different phases are brought into relation again within the present.
The theory of micro-phase differences is an attempt to reconsider this relation through photographic practice.
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