The Photograph is an extended, loaded evidence? as if it caricatured not the figure of what it represents (quite the converse) but its very existence ... The Photograph then becomes a bizarre (i)medium(i), a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporal hallucination, so to speak, a modest (o)shared(i) hallucination (on the one hand 'it is not there,' on the other 'but it has indeed been'): a mad image, chafed by reality.
Roland BarthesAbout author
- Author's profession: Critic, Philosopher
- Nationality: french
- Born: November 12, 1915
- Died: March 25, 1980
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Many references have been made in this book to 'the reader,' who has been much in the news. It is now necessary to warn you that your concern for the reader must be pure: you must sympathize with the reader's plight (most readers are in trouble about half the time) but never seek to know the reader's wants. Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. Start sniffing the air, or glancing at the Trend Machine, and you...
E. B. White
Neither knew it at the time, but a line had been crossed that could not be uncrossed- a running leap over a chasm of ignorance and misunderstanding between species and worlds... and a baby step taken into life's endless possibilities for wonder and joy and surprise that could no more be reversed than one's first taste of chocolate. A dog kiss.
Berkeley Breathed
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