This is a photographer speaking: “The meaning of art is not authenticity but the expression of authenticity. Truth alone can neither justify nor excuse it. Since the object itself is absolutely inimitable, one must always search for the only valid translation into another language. However, it is precisely the difficulty of being faithful to the object, the fear of betraying it—because all literal translations are betrayals—that forces us to recreate or reinvent it. That is what takes us far, the obsessive pursuit of resemblance (whatever we might think today), much farther than imagination or invention.”
This is a painter speaking: “I suppose I never thought the world looked like photographs, really. A lot of people think it does but it’s just one little way of seeing it. All religions are about social control. The church, when it had social control, commissioned paintings, which were made using lenses, and when it stopped commissioning images, its power declined, slowly. Social control today is in the media – and based on photography. The continuum is the mirrors and lenses.”
The photographer: Gyula Halaszs, known as Brassaï (1899 – 1984)
The painter: David Hockney (b. 1937)
It’s good to ask questions.
Have a nice week.
Michel Philippot
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