Towards a Philosophy of Photography Quotes

“Both those taking snaps and documentary photographers, however, have not understood 'information.' What they produce are camera memories, not information, and the better they do it, the more they prove the victory of the camera over the human being.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon this possibility of freedom - and thus its significance - in a world dominated by apparatuses; to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give significance to their lives in the face of the chance necessity of death. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Our thoughts, feelings, desires and actions are being robotized; 'life' is coming to mean feeding apparatuses and being fed by them. In short: Everything is becoming absurd. So where is there room for human freedom?”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“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 itself 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.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“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. This”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Texts do not signify the world, they signify the images they tear up. Hence, to decode texts, means to discover the images dignified by them”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“This apparently non-symbolic, objective character of technical images lead whoever looks at them to see them not as images but as windows”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Traditional images signify phenomena whereas technical (produced by an apparatus) images signify concepts.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“For there is a general desire to be endlessly remembered and endlessly repeatable.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Les images sont médiatrices entre l’homme et le monde.
(...) Censées être des cartes destinées à s’orienter, elles deviennent écrans ;
au lieu de représenter le monde, elles le rendent mécon-naissable, jusqu’à ce que l’homme finisse par vivre en fonction des images qu’il a lui-même créées.
Il cesse de déchiffrer les images, pour les projeter, non déchiffrées, dans le monde «du dehors». (...) Ainsi, en inventant l’écriture, c’est d’un pas de plus que l’homme s’est éloigné du monde. Les textes ne signifient pas le monde, mais les images qu’ils déchirent. Dès lors, déchiffrer des textes revient à découvrir les images qu’ils signifient. La visée des textes est d’expliquer les images ; celle des concepts est de rendre compré-hensibles les représentations. Par conséquent, les textes sont un métacode des images.”
― Vilém Flusser, Pour une philosophie de la photo

“Les images sont médiatrices entre l’homme et le monde. (…) Censées être des cartes destinées à s’orienter, elles deviennent écrans ; au lieu de représenter le monde, elles le rendent mécon-naissable, jusqu’à ce que l’homme finisse par vivre en fonction des images qu’il a lui-même créées. Il cesse de déchiffrer les images, pour les projeter, non déchiffrées, dans le monde « du dehors ». (…)
Ainsi, en inventant l’écriture, c’est d’un pas de plus que l’homme s’est éloigné du monde. Les textes ne signifient pas le monde, mais les images qu’ils déchirent. Dès lors, déchiffrer des textes revient à découvrir les images qu’ils signifient. La visée des textes est d’expliquer les images ; celle des concepts est de rendre compré-hensibles les représentations. Par conséquent, les textes sont un métacode des images.”
― Vilém Flusser, [(Towards a Philosophy of Photography )] [Author: Vilem Flusser] [Jan-2001]

“This, I think, shows what being free means. Not cutting off one’s ties with other but making networks out of these connections in cooperation with them.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography