For Paul de Saint-Victor, such metastases of the photographic view led not to an immaterial, omnipresent gaze but to a pure…
For Paul de Saint-Victor, such metastases of the photographic view led not to an immaterial, omnipresent gaze but to a pure materiality, an immanent image — but a dead one. “The true mission of this useful and humble art form will be to bring sculpture into private life and to perpetuate the photographic image — by petrifying it.” What would it mean to petrify photography? Petrified photography is a kind of photography that has finally escaped the long shadow of the camera obscura. Petrified photography converts photography into a plastic art. And in escaping the limitations of the camera obscura’s single aperture, photography smeared itself across a limitless grid of points, neutering the axis of time while emboldening the axes of space.
Galloway, Alexander R. Uncomputable: Play and Politics in the Long Digital Age. London: Verso, 2021.