The Miracle of Analogy: or The History of Photography Part 1

About this book

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 worlds 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 medium. The photograph moves through time in search of other "kin " some of which may be visual but others of which may be literary 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. The present volume focuses on the nineteenth century and some of its contemporary progeny. It begins with the camera obscura which morphed into chemical photography and lives on in digital form and ends with Walter Benjamin. Key figures discussed along the way include Nicphore Nipce Louis Daguerre William Fox-Talbot Jeff Wall and Joan Fontcuberta.