The photograph has no time. Paintings are in Time as extended by labor. The photograph has no time.
It makes sense, therefore, to say that Being is or has time as long as it is lost within the time of Memory, a time indefinitely prolonged by making itself indicate nothing other than itself, that is, its endless iteration in Time – which is the now. Time (and contained within it, its residuals, its products [think: history, truth, logic, science, language, reality, death, etc.]) is none other than the Other. I have time to sojourn in the world because the Other grants me that time. Being is not being for itself. The closure of Time does not swallow up the otherwise, this because the otherwise has already negated its Being. Infinity is the dimension of otherness.
The analogue photography apparatus is a prototype of the digital photography apparatus. The digital photography apparatus is/made History. The digital photography apparatus is a time machine. History is not the digital photography apparatus’ true calling.
Elsewhere (see here) we said: “The photography apparatus is not an extension of the eye. The photography apparatus is the mind set before the eye.” What is inside is inside, and we cannot see what is inside because it is inside. We cogently place the photography apparatus in front of our eyes and ask it to show us what is inside. And what it does is spit an endless stream of photographs… all representations of this same world. (“It’s what you are seeing.”) “What is inside,” it repeats, “is essentially what is outside.” (“It comes from inside you, but it is what is outside.”) Descartes’ cogito is the Levinasian infinity. It seems that all we remember is this world. When does one step out of Memory?
If you see it, it is, even if you don’t feel it. And if you feel it, it is too.
La poesia entra nel sogno
BOLAÑO, 2012, 11
come un palombaro morto
nell’occhio di dio.
Featured Image:
Available at: https://imgur.com/gallery/zv7kX [accessed 2 December 2022].
References:
BOLAÑO, Roberto. 2012. I Cani Romantici (Los Perros Románticos) (2005). Translated by Francesco Marotta. Quaderni di Traduzioni, XII, Luglio-Dicembre 2012.
