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tograph, for the first timc, puts an cnd to this resistance: hcnceforth thc past is as ccrtain as thc prcsent, what we scc on paper is as certain as wnat werouch. It is thc advcnt of the Photograph—and not, as has been said, of thc cinema—which dividcs thc history of the woricL

Ir is preciscly bccause rhe Photograph is an anthro-pologitally ncw objecr that it must escapc, it scems to me, usual discussions of the image. It is the fashion, nowadays, among Phocographys commcntators (sociologists and semiologists), to sehe upon a semantie rclativity: no "rcality" (great scorn for thc "realists” who do not see that the photograph is always coded), nothing hut arri-fioe: Tbesii, not Physis; the Photograph, they say, is not an analogon of the world; what it represents is fabricated, because the phocographic optic is subject to Albcrtian perspe«ive (entirely historical) and bccause the inscri^ tion on the picture makes a three-dimensional object into a rwo-dimcnsional effigy. This argument is futile: nothing can pręyęnt thc Photograph from being analogical; but at the same time, Photography‘$ nocme has nothing to do with anaiogy (a feature it shares with all kinds of repre-sentations). The realists, of whom I am one and of whom I was already one when I asserred that thc Photograph was an image wirhout codę—even if, obviously, certain codcs do inflect our rcading of it—the realists do not takc thc photograph for a "copy" of rcality, but for an cmanation of past reality. a magie, not an art. To ask whether a photograph is analogical or coded is not a good means of analysis. The important thing is that rhe photograph pos-sesses an evidential force, and that its testimony bears not on thc object bur on timc. From a phenomcnological vicwpoint, in the Photograph, the power of authentication exceed$ the power of representation.

Ali rhe authors concur, Sartre says, in rcmark-ing on the poverty of rhe images which ac-company the reading of a novel: if this novel "rakes” me propcrly, no mcntal image. To rcadings Dearth-of-1m<ige corrcsponds thc Phorograph’s Totality-of-lmage\ not only bccause ir is already an image in itsclf, but becausc this very special image givcs itself out as com-plete—buegral, we might say, playing on the word. The photographic image is fuli, crarnmed: no room, nothing can bc added to it.

In the cincma, whose raw materia! is photographic, the image docs not, how'evcr, have this completeness (which is fortunatc for thc cinema). Why? Becausc the photograph, taken in flux, is impcllcd, ccasclessly drawn toward other views; in the cinema, no doubt, there is always a photographic referent, but this referent shifes, it docs not make a claim in favor of its reality, it docs not protest its former cxi$tence; it docs not cling to me: it is not a specter. Likc the real world, thc filmie world is sustaincd by the presumption that, as Husscrl says, "rhe expcricnce will constantly continue to flow by in thc same constitu-

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