Five Notes for a Phenomenology of the Photographic Image

Abstract

From the beginnings of photography, criticism had concerned itself above all with what it took to be the unique inherent properties of the medium. Following tendencies in other fields, especially in linguistics tand in literary and art criticism, critics have recently put aside the traditional quest for an absolute definition of the photograph, and have ncluding the relation of chess to art. His works include Teoih re du n e(1972). . in their outlooks, we see current philosophical, social, and political i autes Etudes in Paris, Hubert Damisch has written on various topics, attempting to locate the differences between photographs and other igraphic media in the viewer's response. Structuralism represents one iepresent others. In these brief essays by two art critics quite different nterests brought to bear on the act of reading photographs. H A teacher of the history and theory of art at the Ecole Pratique des