An Orchid in the Land of Technology: On the World Made by Photography

Abstract:Interest in “photographic evidence” typically centers on questions of what photographs disclose about the world. This forensic interest responds to the fact that photographic images are made through opto-mechanical processes that are independent of human intention. However, because photography is a means of automatic world picturing, it also has the power to populate the world with a-human images. The ways such images remake the world are investigated through critical readings of Michael Fried, Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, and Max Kozloff.