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What I had noced at the beginning, in a frec and casy manncr, undcr cOver of mcthod, i.e., that cvcry photograph is somehow co natural with ic$ referent, I was rediscovering, overwhehned by the truth of the imagej Hcnccforth I would have to consont to combinc two voiccs: the voicc of banality (to say what evcryonc sccs and knows) and the voicc of singularity i to replenish such banality with all the elan of an emocion which bclongcd only to mysclf). It was as if I were seek-ing the naturę of a verb which had no inńnitivc, only tense and modę.

First of all I had to conccivc, and thcrcforc if possiblc express properly (even if it is a simple thing) how Pho-tography‘s Referent is not the same as the referent of other systeras of rcprcsencation. I cali "photogranhic referent” not the optionally rcal thing to which an imagc_ ot a sign refers but the necessarily real thing which has bccn placcd bcforc the lens, without which thcrc would ix-no photograph.^ainting can fcign reality without having secn it. Discourse combines signs which have referents, of coursc, but these referents can bc and are most often "chimeras.” Contrary to these imications, jn Photography I can never deny that the thing has bcen tbere. Therc is a supc-rimposition herc: of reality and of the pasL And sińce this constraint exists only for^-Photography, we must con-sider it, by reduction, as the vcry csscncc, the nneme of

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and yet immediatcl rcfutably present, and yet already deferred. It is all this which the vcrb intersum means.

Photography. What I intentionalize in a photograph (wc are not ycr speaking of film) is ncither Arr nor Communi-cation, it is Refcrence, which is the founding order of Photography.

The name of Photography'* noeme will thercforc be: 'That-has-bccn," or again: the Intractablc. In Latin (a pedantry nccessary because it illuminatcs certain nu-anccs), rhis would doubtless be said: wterfuit: what I see has bccn here, in this place which cxtends between inftnity and rhe subject (operator or ipcctatnr); it has bccn herc.

Fhas Deen absolutcly, ir-

In the daily flood of photographs, in the thousand forms of interest they secm to provoke, it may be that the noeme "That-has-been” is not repressed (a noeme cannot bc repressed) bur experienced with indifference, as a fca-ture which goes without saying. It is this indifference which rhc Winter Garden Photograph had just roused mc from. According to a paradoxical order—sińce usually wc verify things bcforc dcclaring them "true"—under the effect of a ncw expcriencc, that of intensity, I had induccd the rruth of the image, the reality of its origin; I had identi-fied truth and reality in a unique emotion, in which I hcnccforth placcd the naturę—the genius—of Photography, sińce no painted portrait, supposing that it seemed "tnie" to me, could compcl mc to believe its referent had rcally cxisted.