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film cxaspetated mc; buc when Casanova began dancing wiih che young automaton, my eycs were couched with a kind of painful and delicious intcnsity, as if I wcrc sud-denly cxpetiencing thc effects of a strange diug; each de-tail, which I was sccing so cxactly, savoring ic, so to spcak, down to its last cvidence, overwhelmed me: che figucc’s slcndetncss, its tenuity—as if there wete only a rrifling body undcr che flattened gown; che ftaycd glovcs of white floss silk; thc faint (though touching) absurdity of osuich fcatheis in the hair, that paintcd yet individual, innocent face: something despcrately inett and yet available, of-fered, affcctionate, accocding to an angclic impulsc of "good will" ... Ac which moment I could not help think-ing about Photogtaphy: for I could say all this about thc photogtaphs which touched me (out of which I had methodically consticuccd Photography itsclf).

I then rcalized that thete was a sort of link (or knot) bctwccn Photography, madness, and something whosc name I did not know. I began by calling it: the pangs of love. Was I not, in fact, in lovc with thc Fellini automaton? Is one not in lovc w i tli ccrcain photographs? (Looking at somc photograplis of the Ptoustian world, I fali in love widi Julia Bartct, with the Duc dc Guiihe ...) Yet it was nor quite that. It was a btoadet currenc than a lovet's sentiment. In thc love stirred by Photogtaphy (by ccrtain photogtaphs), anorher musie is heard, its name oddly old-fashioned: Pity. I collccted in a last thought the images which had "prickcd" me (sińce this is the ac-tion of the punctum), like that of the black woman with thc gold nccklace and the strapped pumps. In cach of

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them, inescapably, I passed bcyond thc unrcality of thc thing rcprcscnted, I cntcrcd ctazily into the spccracle, into the image, caking into my arms what is dead, what is going to die, as Nietzsche did when, as Podach rells us, on January 3, 1889, he threw himsclf in tears on the neck ot a bcatcn horse: gone mad for Pity's sake.

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Socicry is concerned to tamę thc Photograph, to temper thc madness which kecps threatening to cxplode in thc face of whoever looks at it. To do this, it possesses two means.

The first consists of making Photogtaphy into an art, for no art is mad. Whencc the photographcrs insistcnce on his rivalry with the artist, on subjccting himself to thc rhetorie of painting and its sublimated modę of exhibition. Photogtaphy can in fact bc an art: when rhere is no longcr any madness in it, when its noeme is forgoctcn and when consequcnrly its essencc no longet acts on me: do you suppose that looking at Commander Puyo*s strollcrs I am distutfced and exclaim "That-has-been!"? The cinema patticipates in this domestication of Photography—at le-ast thc fictional cincma, prcciscly the one said to be thc scvcnth art; a film can be mad by artifice, can present the cultural signs of madness, ir is never mad by naturę (by iconic status); it is always the very oppositc of an halluci-nation; it is simply an illusion; its vision is onciric, not ccmncsic.

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