Screen shot 13 02 08 at 06 30
The other means of taming thc Photograph is to gcn-cralizc, to grcgarize, banalize it until it is no longer con-fronted by any image in rclation to which it can mark itsclf, assert its special charactcr, its scandal, its madness. This is what is happening in out society, whcrc thc Photo-graph crushes all orher images by its ty ranny: no morę prints, no morę figurativc painting, unless hcnccforth by fascinated (and fascinaring) submission to thc phoco-graphic model. Looking around at thc customcrs in a cafć, somcone remarked to mc (rightly): "Look how gloomy they arc! nowadays che images are livclier rhan the peoplc." One of thc marks of our world is perhaps this reversal: we live according to a generalized image-reper-toirc. Consider thc United States, whcrc cvcrything is transformed into images: only images exist and arc pro-duced and are consumed. An extreme cxample: go into a New York pom shop; here you will not find vice, but only its tableaux fitants (from which Mapplcthorpc has $o lucidly derived ccrtain of his photographs); it is as if the anonymous individual (never an actor) who gets himself tied up and beaten conccivcs of his plcasurc only if this plcasure joins thc stcrcocyped (worn-out) image of thc sado-masochist: pleasure passes through the image: here is the great mutation. Such a reversal necessarily raises tlić ethical cjuestion: not chat the image is immoral, irreli-gious, or diabolic (as somc havc dcclared it, upon the advent of the Photograph), but bccausc, when generalized, it complctcly dc-realizes thc human world of con-ńicts and desires, under cover of illustraung it. What characterizcs the so<allcd advanccd societies is that they
i i8f
today consume images and no longcr, like thosc of thc pasc, beliefs; they are therefore morę liberał, less fanaci-cal, but also morc "false" (less "authenric”)—something we translate, in ordinary consciousness, by the avowal of an impression of nauseated boredom, 3S if the univer-salized image were producing a world rhat is without diffcrencc (indifferenr), from which can rise, herc and there. only the ery of anarchisms, marginaJisms, and in-dividualisms: ler us abolish rhe images, let us save immc-diare Dcsire (desire wirhout mediation).
Mad or tamę? Photography can be one or the other: ramę if ics rcalism rcmains relative, tempered by acstheric or empirical habits (to leaf through a maga/inc at thc hairdresser's, rhe dentists); mad if this rcalism is absolute and, so to speak, original, obliging thc !oving and terrified consciousncss to return to the very lettcr of Time: a strictly revulsive movcment which reverses the coursc of the thing, and which I shall cali, in conclusion, the photo-graphic eestasy.
Sue h are the two ways of the Photograph. The choicc is minę: to subjeer its spec tacie to thc civilized codę of per-fcct illusions, or to confronr in it the wakening of intract-ablc reality.
! 119
Wyszukiwarka
Podobne podstrony:
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 06 15 The nocme of Photography i$ simplc, banał; no depth: "that has b
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 06 06 "How eon one have an inielligens <ur wisbout thinking of
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 06 22 film cxaspetated mc; buc when Casanova began dancing wiih che young a
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 58 32 i V Ćf-u/r/t/j i Pa i U Z c H r i Specialty of tbe Photograph
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 59 53 The disordcr which from thc very flrsc I had ob-servcd in Photography
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 00 28 .. the shcet carried by tbe weeping mofbtr (w by tbis skuci?) ., KOUN
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 01 52 I The ttr*pp«d purnps James Van ona Zbe. Family Po*trait. 1926 0954);
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 05 03 cxplosion$, in short, of impaticnces, of cverything which denies ripe
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 58 42 .Sdtory After-tbe-Fact and Silence Blind Field Palinodc RT Two "
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 58 50 ; UcLiiśJk P.W.MWrr-ff- One day, quite somc cimc ago, I happencd on a
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 59 00 Who could help me? From the First step, that of classification (wc mu
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 59 10 p amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart of the moving wor
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 59 19 laiaJUBlMM sonal impulscs, I would try to formulate the fundamenta! f
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 59 29 hole" (stenope) through which he looks, limits, frames, and pers
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 59 36 apart from any effigy. What I want, in short, is that my (mobile) ima
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 59 45 image-repertoire, thc Photograph (thc one I intend) rep-resents that
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 00 01 pher; but I hadn’t—I don’t like all o f Mapplethorpc. Hcncc I could n
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 00 11 are ccrtłinly consurutcd as persons, but only bccause of their resemb
Screen shot 13 02 08 at 00 19 } "I undtntood as once thas tbis photograph s 9adventuret
więcej podobnych podstron