ABSTRACT
This essay proposes that the performative index is an exemplar of the photographic imagination. The performative index, as defined by Margaret Olin in her reading of Roland Barthes’s punctum, denotes a referent beyond the photographic frame, an affective association triggered by an image that is not visible in the photograph itself. In this way, it demonstrates how the imagination informs viewing through both projection and introjection, shaping what may or may not be seen in actual photographs. Building on this premise, this chapter traces imaginative paths inspired by James VanDerZee’s photographs, including those of Barthes and artist Lorna Simpson in her work 9 Props (1995), as well as the author’s own ruminations, to show how the performative index may be voluntary or involuntary, and how its opening onto the photographic imagination may be expansive and illuminating, or narrow and obscuring.
