ABSTRACT
Roland Barthes insisted – certainly influenced by his reflections on the way in which narratives presentify the past – that in the photographic image the mode of the past represents the only decisive moment for understanding photography. Photography has made the past perceptible whereas in language, the presentification of the past is an act of imagination. Temporality is joined by modality, and modality features as much in photography’s reality conflict as it does in the reality paradox created by preemption. Digital photography has brushed aside any lingering doubt about the cognitive character of photography. The objective as well as the subjective view of photography, however, agree that in photography, subjectivity and objectivity constantly clash and part ways again. Reflections on photography have often stressed how much it estranges what is familiar, on the one hand, and to what extent it subjects seeing to an unyielding objectivism on the other.
