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I musc therefore submit to this law: I cannot pcnetracc, cannot reach into thc Photograph. I can only swccp it with my glance, like a

smooth surface. The Photograph is fiat, platirudinous in the true sense ot the word, chat is whar I must acknowl-edge. It is a mistake to associate Phocography, by reason of its technical origins, with che notion of a dark passagc (camera obscura). It is camera lucida chat we should say (such was the name ot that apparatus, anterior to Photography, which permitted drawing an object through a pnsm, one cyc on the model, the other on the paper); for, from the eye‘s viewpoint, "thc esscnce ot the image is to be altogerher oueside, without intimacy, and yet morę in-accessible and mysterious than thc rhought of the inner-mosc being; wichouc signification, yet summoning up the depch of any possible meaning; unrevea!ed yet manifest, having that absence-as-presence which constitutes the lure and the fascination of thc Sircns” (Blanchot).

It the Photograph cannot be penetrated, it is becausc of its cvidential power. In the image, as Sarcre says, the object yields itself wholly, and our vision of it is certain— contrary to the cext or co other pcrccpcions which givc me the object in a vaguc, arguable manner, and therefore incite me to suspkions as to what I think I am sceing. Tliis certitude is sovereign because I have the Icisure to observe thc photograph with intensity; but also, however long I

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undo, unless you prove to me that this image is not a photograph. But also, unforninatcly, it is in proportion to its ccrrainry that I can say nothing about this photograph.

extcnd this ob$ervation, it tcachcs mc nothing. It is pre-cisely in this arresi of interpretation that thc Phorograph‘s

becn\ for anyone who holds a photograph in his hand,

iKrc is a fundamcntal belief, an ”ur-doxa" nothing can

Yet as soon as it is a matter of being—and no longer of a thing—the Photographs evidence has an entirely different stake. Seeing a bottlc,

an iris stalk, a chicken, a pałace phorographetl involves only rcality. But a body, a face, and what is morc, fre-quentiy, the body and face of a be!oved person? Since Photography (this is its noeme) authenticates thc cxis-tcnce of a cettain being, I want to discover that being in the photograph completely, i.e., in its cssencc, "as into itsclf . . .” bcyond simple resemblance, whether legał 01 hereditary. Herc the Photographs platitude hecomes morę painful, for it can correspond to my fond desire only by something inexpresstble: evidcnt (this is the law of thc Photograph) yet improbable (I cannot provc it). This something is what I cali che air (thc cxpression, the look).

The air of a face is unanalyzable (oncc I can decom-pose, I provc or I rcject, in short I doubt, I dcviate from the Photograph, which is by naturę totally evi<ience: evi-

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