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Deformations.

Our sexual understanding, sensibility and desire are deformed. Publicity objectifies women’s body at the same time that the brands claim to be feminist and anti-sexist. The idea of consumption is integrated with the sexual practice. Sex as a metaphor of involvement, as a creative exercise of exposure and vulnerability is gone. We have models instead of autonomy, we obey to a standard format that all the media around us teaches us as the only way. A subtle but massively education that says NO to life. We perform sex with self entitlement and narcissism. We don’t explore our vulnerabilities, our peculiarities. We show, not our intimacy but a made up character, a product, a version of us that has very little to do with our complexity. Intimate layers, transformation, fragility, mutual renewed awareness, self growth do not concern us, narcissism does. We follow a model given by a market, a lot and fast is how they teach us to do everything. We touch not according to our desires but according to this model, a model that says what sex is and that says it according to market interests. Life is of no concern. We are afraid of real exposure, we fuck to escape. We are coward and lost, we are consumers, we are deformed.

FÜR EINE PHILOSOPHIE DER FOTOGRAFIE

PART ONE-THE IMAGE

1) Images are significant surfaces. Images signify, mainly, something ‘out there’ in space and time that they have to make comprehensible to us as abstractions (as reductions of the four dimensions of space and time to the two dimensions of the surface). This specific ability to abstract surfaces out of space and time and to project them back into space and time is what is known as ‘imagination’. It is the precondition for the production and decoding of images. In other words: the ability to encode phenomena into two dimensional symbols and to read these symbols.

2) Images are mediations between the world and human beings. Human beings ‘ex-ist’,i.e. the world is not immediately accessible to them and therefore images are needed to make it comprehensible. However, as soon as this happens, images come between the world and human beings. They are supposed to be maps but they turn into screens: instead of representing the world, they obscure it until human beings’ lives finally become a function of the images they create. Human beings cease to decode the images and instead project them, still encoded, into the world ‘out there’, which meanwhile it self becomes like an image, a context of scenes, of states of things. This reversal of the function of the image can be called ‘idolatry’, we can observe the process at work in the present day: the technical images currently all around us are in the process of magically restructuring our ‘reality’ and turning it into a global image scenario. Essentially this is a question of amnesia. Human beings forget they created the images in order to orientate themselves in the world. Since they are no longer able to decode them, their lives become a function of their own images: imagination has turned into hallucination.

PART FOUR-THE PHOTOGRAPH

1) Reduced to basic elements, photographers’ intentions are as follows: first, to encode their concepts of the world into images; second, to do this by using a camera; third, to show the images produced in this way to others so that they can serve as models for their experience, knowledge, judgment and actions; fourth, to make this models as permanent as possible. In short: Photographers’ intentions are to inform others and through their photographs to immortalize themselves in the memory of others. For photographers, their concepts (and the ideas signified by the concepts) are the main reasons for taking photographs, and the camera’s program is in the service of these raisons.
Likewise reduced to its basic elements, the camera’s program is as follows: first; to place its inherent capabilities into the image; second, to make use of a photographer for this purpose, accept in borderline cases of total automation, third; to distribute the images produced in this way so that society is in a feed back relationship to the camera which makes it possible for the camera to improve progressively. In short, the camera’s program provides for the realization of its capabilities and, in the process, for the use of society as a feed back mechanism for its progressive improvement.
As mentioned previously, there are further programs behind this one (that one of the photographic industry, of the industrial complex, of the socio-economic apparatuses. This intention can be seen in every single photograph and can be decoded from it.

2) The question put to photographs by critics of photography can therefore be formulated as: ‘How far have photographers succeeded in subordinating the camera’s program to their own intentions, and by what means?’ And vice-versa: ‘Hoe=w far has the camera succeeded in redirecting photographers’ intentions back to the interests of the camera’s program, and by what means?”

3) To summarize: Like all technical images, photographs are concepts encoded as states of things, including photographers’ concepts such as those that have been programmed into the camera. This gives photography critics the task of decoding these two interweaving codes in any photograph. Photographers encode their concepts as photographic images so as to give others information, so as to produce models for them and thereby to become immortal in the memory of others. The camera encodes the concepts programmed into it as images in order to program society to act as a feedback mechanism in the interests of progressive camera improvement. If photographic criticism succeeds in unravelling this two intentions of photographs, then the photographic messages will be decoded. If photography critics do not succeed in this task, photographs remain undecoded and appear to be representations of states of things in the world out there, just as if they reflected themselves onto a surface. Looked at uncritically like this, they accomplish their task perfectly: programming society to act as though under a magic spell for the benefit of cameras.

Deformationen.

Unser sexuelles Verständnis, unsere Empfindsamkeit und unser Begehren sind deformiert. In den Medien wird der weibliche Körper objektifiziert, zugleich stellen Marken sich als feministisch und antisexistisch dar. Die Idee des Konsums wird mit der sexuellen Praxis integriert. Sex als Metapher für Beziehung, als kreative Übung der Entblößung und Verletzlichkeit verschwindet dabei. Anstelle einer autonomen Sexualität haben wir Modelle, wir gehorchen einem von den Mainstream-Medien postulierten Standard, als wäre er der einzige Weg.
Eine subtile, aber allgegenwärtige Erziehung, die NEIN zum Leben sagt.
Unser Sex ist geprägt von Narzissmus und Anspruchsdenken. Wir erforschen nicht unsere Verletzlichkeiten und Eigentümlichkeiten. Wir zeigen nicht unser intimes Inneres, sondern einen erfundenen Charakter, ein Produkt, eine Version von uns, die mit unserer Komplexität nur wenig zu tun hat. Intime Schichten, Verwandlung, Zerbrechlichkeit, gemeinsam erneuertes Bewusstsein, Entwicklung interessieren uns weniger als unser Narzissmus.
Das Modell des Marktes lehrt uns die Leitprinzipien: schnell und viel. Wir berühren nicht nach unseren Wünschen, sondern diesem Modell folgend; einem Modell, das diktiert, was Sex ist, und das den Marktinteressen entprechend.
Das Leben ist nicht von Belang. Wir haben Angst, uns wirklich zu zeigen, wir ficken, um zu entkommen. Wir sind feige und verloren, wir sind Konsumenten, wir sind deformiert.