The Curious Image: Husserlian Thoughts on Photography

Abstract

This paper develops a Husserlian analysis of photography. Based on Husserl’s account of the constitution of images and image-consciousness, the photograph can likewise be understood as constituted according to the tripartite distinction image-thing, image-object, and image-subject. As this essay argues, however, the mechanical production of (traditional) photography is a mirror of memory that enjoys a special phenomenological relation to the past.