Screen shot 13 02 08 at 04 55

Ali those young photographcrs who are at work in thc world, dctermined upon thc capture of actuality, do not know that thcy are agents of

Death. This is thc way in which our time assumes Death: with the denying alibi of the distraccedly "alive,” of which rhe Photographer is in a sense thc professional. For Pho-tography must have somc historical relation wirh what Edgar Morin calls rhe "crisis of death” beginning in the second half of che nineteench ccntury; for my part I should prefer that insread of tonstantly relocating thc ad-vent of Phocography in its social and economic context, wc should also inquire as to the anthropological place of Death and of the new image. For Death must bc sorne-where in a society; if it is no longcr (or less intensely) in religion. it must be elsewhcrc; perhaps in this image which produces Death while trying to preserve life. Contem-porary with the withdrawal of rites, Photography may correspond co thc inrrusion, in our modern society, of an asymbolic Dearh, outsidc of rciigion, outsidc of ritual, a kind of abrupt dive into literał Death. Life J Death: the paradigm is reduced to a simple click, thc one separating the initial pose from che finał print.

With the Phocograph, we enter into fiat Death. One day, leaving one of my classes, someone said to me with disdain: "You talk about Death vcry flatly.” —As if the horror of Death were not precisely its platitudc! The hor-rot is this: nothing to say about the death of one whom I k>ve most, nothing to say about hec photograph, which I conrcmplarc withouc ever bcing ablc to get to thc hearr of it, to transform ir. The only "thought" I can have is that at rhe end of this first death, my own death is inscribed; berween thc rwo, nothing morę than waiting; I have no other rcsource chan this trony: ro speak of thc "nothing to say.”

The only way I can transform the Photograph is into refuse: either the drawer or rhe wasrebasker. Nor only does it commonly have the fate of paper (perishable), but even if it is attached to morę lasting supports, it is still mortal: like a hving orgamsm, it is born on the level of thc sprouting silver grains, it flourishes a moment, then ages . .. Attacked by light, by humidicy, it fades, weakens, vamshes; there ts nothing left to do but throw it away. Earlicr societies managed so thar memory, the substitute for life, was ctemal and thar at least the thing which spoke Death should itself be immortal: this was the Monument. But by making the (mortal) Photograph into thc generał and somehow natural witness of "what has been,” modern society has renounced thc Monument. A paradox: thc same century invented History and Photography. But His tory is a memory fabricared according to positive for-mulas, a pure intellectual discourse which abolishes mythic Time; and thc Photograph is a cerrain bur fugicivc tesrimony; so rhat everything, today, prepares out race for this imporence: to be no longer able ro conceive duration, af?ectively or symbolically: the age of the Photograph is also the age of rcvolutions, contcstations, assassinations,

i 93