Abstract
Photographs, or images as the final result of a process, merely mark out the moment when the eye is helplessly limited to what it sees. Thus, what escapes the eye in the physical sense, i.e. what the eye will never see, is what occurs before the product- image, within the act itself. The latent image, the desire-image, unfolds throughout the duration of the photographic act. When the picture is ‘taken’, then the desire subsides until the next desire for another image arises. Based on the photographic experiment by Jerry Chan, member of a group of blind people, this article aims at rethinking the photographic act as the real- life experience of an impression process, leading the blind apprentice photographer to experience sightedness within his very flesh.
Highlights
Based on the photographic experiment by Jerry Chan, member of a group of blind people, this article aims at rethinking the photographic act as the reallife experience of an impression process, leading the blind apprentice photographer to experience sightedness within his very flesh
As Jean-Lou Tournay remarks, we notice that photography does not appear in MerleauPonty’s words: “photography always seems to be the object of a suspicion, as if it were the accomplice of a manner of seeing the world, ignoring the living character of man’s relationship to this world, as if it merely presented images incapable of being inhabited by a gaze.” (2013)
We will here identify the ethical stakes of a blinding experiment, in the duration of the photographical act and in a teaching of photography such as given in many institutions, via an ocularcentrist vision — I mean outside from an incorporeity experience
Summary
Based on the photographic experiment by Jerry Chan, member of a group of blind people, this article aims at rethinking the photographic act as the reallife experience of an impression process, leading the blind apprentice photographer to experience sightedness within his very flesh. Between seeing the image and thinking through it, the gap - perhaps can we speak of a gap as far as it would represent an adequate setting for the birth of thought? Photographic images invade the surface of the world, superimpose themselves on reality and worm themselves into the social networks to the point of becoming metafaces on which our eyes slide. In this sweeping movement, they divert us from the world with which they merge and in the same movement they absorb us too. Comes a time when, in this not seen-before but rather over-seen, one feels the urge to not seeing anymore for what we are offered to see does not suit us, does not involve us, does not resound with us anymore
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