Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Bazin's Metaphors for Photography

In "The Ontology of the Photographic Image", André Bazin introduces a number of different metaphors for understanding what a photographic image is like:

1. mummy
2. sarcophagus
3. terra cotta statuette of a dead person
4. arrow-pierced clay bear
5. oil portrait of royalty
6. flower
7. snowflake
8. Holy Shroud of Turin
9. decal
10. transfer
11. fingerprint
12. hallucination that is also a fact
13. insect trapped in amber

At the very least, you've got to give him props for coming up with so many different metaphors in a nine page essay.

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