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(ir was impossible for me co participatc in a world of scrength, to go out in thc cvcnings; all social lifc appalled me). During hcr iilncss, I nurscd hcr, held thc bowl of tea she likcd bccause it was casicr to drink from than from a cup; she had bccome my littic girl, uniting for me with that csscntial child she was in hcr first photograph. In Brecht, by a reversal 1 uscd to admire a good dcal, it is thc son who (politically) educates thc mother; yet I ncvct cducated my mother, ncver convetted her to anything at all; in a sensc I nevcr "spokc” to hcr, nevcr "discoursed" in her presencc, for her; we supposed, without saying anything of thc kind to cach other, that thc frivolous insigniłi-cance of language, thc suspension of images musc be the vcry space of love, its musie. Ultimatcly I expcricnced her, strong as she had bcen, my inner law, as my feminine child. Which was my way of rcsoWing Dcath. If, as so many philosophees have said, Dcath is the harsh victory of thc race, if the particular dies for thc sacisfaction of the universal, if after having becn reproduced as other chan himself, thc individual dies, having rhereby denied and transccnded himself, I who had not procrcatcd, I had, in her vcry illness, engendered my mother. Once she was dead I no longer had any reason to attunc myself to thc progress of the superior Life Forcc (the race, the spe-cies). My particularity could never again universalizc it-self (unless, utopically, by writing, whose projecc hcncc-forth would become the uniaue goal of my life). From now on I could do no morę than await my total, undia-lcccical dcath.

That is whac I read in the Winter Garden Photograph.

Something likc an essence of the Photograph floatcd in this pardcular picrure. I therefore decided to "derivc" all Photography (its "natarć”) from thc only photograph which assuredly cxistcd for mc, and to takc it somehow as a guide for my last investigation. All the worlds photographs formcd a Labyrinth. I kncw that at the center of this Labyrinth I would find nothing but this sole picture, fulhlling Nictzsches prophecy: "A labyrinthinc man never seeks the truth, but only his Ariadnę.” The Winter Garden Photograph was my Ariadnę, not bccause it would help me discover a secret thing (monster or treasurc), but bccause it would tell me what constitutcd that thread which drew mc^tSWard Photography. I had understood that hence-forrh I must interrogate tlve evidcnce of Photography, not from the viewpoint of pleasurc, but in relation to what wc romanricaliy cali love and death.

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(1 cannot reproducc the Winter Garden Photograph. It exi$ts only for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture. one of the thousand manifcstations~of thc "ordinary”| it cannot in any way constirute the visiblc object of a science; it cannot establish an objectivity, in the positivc sensc of thc term; at most it would interest your studium: period, clothcs, photogeny; but in it, for you, no wound.)

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