The miracle of analogy, or, The history of photography

Abstract

The Miracle of Analogy is the first of a two-volume reconceptualization of photography. It argues that photography originates in what is seen, rather than in the human eye or the camera lens, and that it is the world's primary way of revealing itself to us. Neither an index, representation, nor copy, as conventional studies would have it, the photographic image is an analogy. This principle obtains at every level of its being: a photograph analogizes its referent, the negative from which it is generated, every other print that is struck from that negative, and all of its digital "offspring." Photography is also unstoppably developmental, both at the level of the individual image and of the medium. The photograph moves through time, in search of other "kin," some of which may be visual, but others of which may be architectural, philosophical, or literary. Finally, photography develops with us, and in response to us. It assumes historically legible forms, but when we divest them of their saving power, as we always seem to do, it goes elsewhere. -- Dust jacket.

Contents

Pt. 1. The second coming ; Unstoppable development ; Water in the camera ; A kind of republic ; Je vous ; Posthumous presence.