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This longing to inhabit, if I obscnre it dearly in mysclf, is neither oneiric (I do noc dream of somc cxtravagant site) nor cmpirical (I do not intcnd to buy a housc according to che view$ of a rcal-cstatc agency); it is fantasmatic, dcriving ftom a kind of sccond sight which sccms to bear me forward to a utopian time, or to carry mc back to somewhcrc in myself: a double movcment which Baudc-lairc celebrated in I witał ton au voyage and La Vie an-terieure. Looking at thesc landscapcs of prcdileccion, it is as if / were certain of having been thcrc or of going there.

Now Freud says of the maternal body rhat "there is no other place of which one can say wich so much ccrtainty chat one ha$ already been there.” Such then would be the essence of the landscape (chosen by desire): heimlich, awakening in me the Morher (and never the disturbing Mothcr).

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Having thus reviewcd the dbale interesu which certain photographs awaken in me, I dcduced that the studium, insofar as it is nor traversed, lashcd, striped by a dctail (punctum) which attracts or distresses me, engenders a very widespread type of pho-tograph (the most widespread in the world), which we might cali the unary photograptfyln gcncrative grammar, a transformation is unary if; rhfough .it, a single scrics is generated by the base: such are the passive, negative, in-

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terrogarive, and cmphacic transformations. The Photo-graph is unary when ir emphatically transforms "reality" without doubling it, without making it vacillate (emphasis is a power of cohcsion): no duality, no indirection, no disturbancc. The unary Photograph has every reason to be banał, ' unit)'" of composition being the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of acadcmic) rhetorie: "The sub-ject," says one handbook for amateur photographcrs,

"must be simple, free of useless accessories; this is callcd the Scarch for Unity."

News photographs are vcry often unary (the unary' photograph is not nccessarily tranquil). In these images. no punctum: a certain shock—the literał can traumatizc ~^ur no disrurbance; the photograph can "shout," nor"_ wound. ihcse g)urnalistic photographs are received (all ( j ^ afoncej, pcrccived. I glance through them, 1 don‘t rccall _v JL ^r£^enl; "O detail (in somc corncr) ever interrupts my read-jl?(*kpg: I am interested in them (as I am interested in the C50CPtvorId), I do not Iove them.

Another unary photograph is the pornographic photograph (I am not saying the erotic photograph: the erotic is a pornographic rhat has been disturbed, fissured). Nothing morę homogeneous than a pornographic photograph. It is always a naive photograph, without intention and without calcularion. I.ikc a shop window which shows only one illuminated piece of jcwclry, it is completely constituted by the presentation of only one thing: scx: no sccondary, untimely object ever manages to half conceal, delay, or distract ... A proof a contrario: Mapplethorpc

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