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graphs, in which 1 rcad a period contemporary wirh my youth, or with my mother, or beyond, with my grand-parents, and into which 1 project a troubling hcing, that of the lineage of which I am the finał term. But this is also truć of the photographs which at firsc glance havc no link, cvcn a metonymic one, with my exisrcncc (for instance, all joumalistic photographs). Each photograph is rcad as the privare appearance of its referent; the age of Photog-raphy corrcsponds prcciscly to rhc cxplosion of the privatc into the public, or rather into the creation of a ncw social value, which is the publicity of the private: the privatc is _ consumcd as such,}publicly (the inccssant aggressions of the Press against the privacy of stars and the growing difliculties of Icgislation to govcrn them testify to this movemcnt). But sińce the privare is not only one of our goods (falling under the historical laws of property), Since it is also the ahsolutcly precious, inalicnablc site where my image is frec (frcc to abolish itsclf), as it is the condition of an interiority which I belicvc is identified with my trurh, or, if you Iike, with the Intractable of which I consist, I must, by a netessary resistance, recon-stitutc the division of public and private\ I want to utter interiority without yielding intimacy. I crperience the Photograph and the world in which it participarts accord-ing to tWo regions: on one side the Images, on the other my photographs; on one side, unconcern, shifting, noise, the inessenrial (even if 1 am abusivcly deafcned by it), on the other the burning, the wounded.

(Usually the amateur is defined as an immaturc State of the artist: somconc who cannot—or will not—achicvc the

mastcry of a profession. But in the field of photograph ic practicc, ic is the amateur, on the contrary, who is the assumption of the professional: for it is hc who stands closer to the noetne of Photography.)

If I like a photograph, if it disturbs me, I linger over it. What am I doing, during the whole timc I rtmam with it? I look at it, I

scrutinize it, as if I wanted to know morę abour the thing or the person it represents. Lost in the dcpths of the Winter Garden, my mochcrs face is vague, faded. In a firsr impuise, I exclaimcd: "Thcrc she is! Shc’s rcally thete! At last, there she is!" Now I claLm to know—and to bc able To śay adequately-—why, in what she consists. 1 want to outline the lovcd face by thought, to make it into the uniquc field of an intense obscrvation; I want to enlargc

I enlarge, and, so to speak, I retard, in order to have timc to know at last. The Photograph justifics this desire,

evcn if it docs not satisfy it: I can havc the fond hopc of

discovering truth only becausc Photography's noet/ie is

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