ABSTRACT
When the shutter is released the light which passes through the lens simply imprints an image of the world onto the sensitive panel. Certainly the camera, particularly in its modern, easy-to-use form, has come to be thought of as what one art historian has called a “natural machine”. And by its alliance to the mechanical device of the camera it would therefore seem reasonable to propose that, rather than the painting, in the domain of the artefact it is the photograph which is best qualified to represent this ideal. The subject, on the contrary, emerges uncontained, florid. In recognising this it can, in psychoanalysis, be called jouissance. As with the snapshot however the subject of psychoanalysis does not make an autonomous entrance. Indeed, it is for Henri Cartier-Bresson precisely the quality of fabrication which distinguishes the snapshot as a work of art.
