TH E O NTO LO GY

O F TH E P H OTO G RA PH I C I MAG E

IF THE plastic arts w ere put under psychoanalysis, the practice of

embalming the dead might turn out to be a fundamental factor in
their creation. The process might reveal that at the origin of paint­
ing and sculpture there lies a mummy complex. The religion of
ancient Egypt, aimed against death, saw survival as depending on
the continued existence of the corporeal body. Thus, by providing a
defense against the passage of time it satisfied a basic psychological
need in man, for death is but the victory of ti me To preserve,
.

artificially, his bodily appearance is to snatch it from the flow of

time, to stow it away neatly, so to speak, in the hold of life. It was
natural, therefore, to keep up appearances in the face of the reality
of death by preserving flesh and bone. The first Egyptian statue,
then, was a mummy, tanned and petrified in sodium. But py ram ids
and lab yrinthine corridors offered no certain guarantee against ulti­
mate pillage.
Other forms of insurance were therefore sought. So, near the
sarcophagus, al ongside the corn th at was to feed the dead, the
Egypti ans placed terra cotta statuettes, as substitute mummies
which might replace the bodies if these were de stroyed It is this
.

religiou s use, then, that lays bare the p rimo rdial function of statu-

9
What Is Cinema?
ary, nam ely , the preserv a ti on of life by a representation of life.
Another m anifestation of the same kind of thing is the arrow­
pierced clay bear to b e found in prehis toric caves, a magic identity­
substitute for the living animal, that will ensure a suc c essful hunt.
The evolution, side by side, of art and civilization has relieved the
plastic arts of their magic role. Loui s XIV did not have h i mself
embalmed. He was content to survive in his portrait by Le Brun.
Civilization cannot, however, entirely cast out the bogy of time. It
can only sublimate our concern with it to the level of rational
thinking. No one b el ieves any longer in the ontological identity of
model and image, but all are agreed that the image helps us to
remember the subject and to p reserve him from a second spiritual
death . To day the making of images no longer sh a res an an­
thropocentric, u tilitarian purpose. It is no longer a ques ti on of sur­
vival afte r death, but of a l arger concept, the cre atio n of an ideal
world in the likeness of the real, with its own te m p oral des tiny .
"How vain a thing is painting" if underneath our fond admiration
for its wo rks we do not discern man's primitive need to have the
last word in the argument with death by means of the form that
endures. If the hi s tory of the plasti c arts is less a matter of their
aesthetic than of their psych ol ogy then it will be seen to be essen­
tiall y the story of resemblance, or, if you will , of realism.
Seen in this s oci ol ogical perspective photography and cinema
would provide a natural explanation for the great spiritu al and
technical crisis that overtook modern painting around the middle of
the last century. Andre Malraux has described the cinema as the
furthermost evolution to date of plastic realism, the beginnings of
which were first manifest at the Renaissance and which found its
completest expression in baroque painting.
It is true that painting, the world over, has struck a varied
balance between t he symbolic and realism. However, in the fif­
teenth century Western painting began to tum from its age-old
concern with spiritual realities expre s se d in th e form proper to it,

10
 The Ontology of the Photographic Image
towards an effort to combine this spiritual exp ression with as com­
plete an imitation as pos s ible of the outside world.
The decisive moment undoubtedly came with the d iscovery of
the first scientific and already, in a sense, mechanical s ystem of
reproduction, na mely , p erspecti ve : the camera obscura of Da Vinci
fore sh ad owe d the camera of N iepce . The artist was now in a posi­
tion to crea te the illusion of three-dimensional sp ace within which
thi ngs appe ared to exist as our eyes i n re ality s ee t h em .
Thenceforth painting was torn between two ambitions : one,
pri marily aes the tic, nam ely the express io n of spiritu al reality wh ere­
in the s ymbol transcended its model; the oth er, purel y psychologi­
cal, n a m e l y the duplication of the world outside. The s atis f a c ti o n of
this appe ti te fo r ill usi o n merely served to increase it till , bit by bit,
it con s u med th e pl as tic arts . How ever , s i n ce p e rsp e ctive had only
solved the problem of form and not of movement, realism was
forced to continue the search for some w ay of giving dramatic
e xp r e s sion to the moment, a ki n d of p s y ch ic fourth dimension that
could suggest life in the tortured immobili ty of b aro que art. *
The great artists, of course, h av e always been able to combine
the two tendencies. Th ey have allotted to each its pr oper pl ac e in
the hierarchy of thi ngs , ho l d in g reali ty at th eir command and mo ld­
ing it at will i n to the fabric of thei r art. Nevertheless, the fact
remains that we are faced wi th tw o essenti al l y di ffere n t p h e nom en a
and these any obj e ct iv e critic must v i ew s ep a r atel y if he is to un­
ders tan d the e v olu tion of the pi ctori al . The need for illu sion has no t
ceased to trouble the heart of p ainting since the sixteenth century.
It i s a p urely mental need , of itself nonaesthetic, the o rigi ns of
wh ich must be sought in the procli vity of the mind towards magic.
However, it is a need th e pull of w hi ch has been strong enough to
have seriously up s et the e quilibriu m of the pla s tic arts.
'" It wou l d be interesting from this point of view to study . in the illustrated
magazines of 1 8 90-- 1 9 1 0, the rivalry between photographic reporting and the
use of drawings. The latter, in pa rt icu l a r, satisfied the baroque need for the
dramatic. A feeling for the photographic document developed only gradually.

11
What Is Cinema?
The quarrel over realism in art s tems from a misunderstanding,
from a confusion between the aesthetic and the psychological; be­
tween true realism, the need that is to give significant expression to
the world both concretely and its essence, and the pseudorealism of
a deception aimed at fooling the eye ( or for that matter the mind ) ;
a pseudorealism content in other words with illusory ap pearances * .

Th at is why medieval art never passed through this crisis; simul­

taneously vividly realistic and highly spiritual, it knew nothing of
the drama that came to light as a consequence of technical develop­
ments. Perspective was the origin al sin of Western p ainting .

It was redeemed from sin by Niepce and Lumiere. In achiev­

ing the aims of baroque art, photography has freed the p l asti c arts
from their obsession with likeness. Painting was forced, as it turned
out, to offer us illusion and this il lu si on was reckoned sufficient unto
art. Photography and the cinema on the other hand are discoveries
that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession
with realism.
No matter how s ki llful the painter, his work was always in fee to
an inescapable subjectivity. The fact that a human hand intervened
cast a sh adow of doubt over the image. Again, the essential factor
in the tr ans ition from the baroque to p hotogr aphy is not the per­
fecting of a physical process ( photography will l on g remain the
inferior of painting in the reproduction of color) ; rather does it lie
in a psychological fact, to wit, in completely satisfying our appetite
for illu sion by a mechanical reprodu ct ion in the making of which
man plays no part. The solution is not to be fo und in the result
achieved but in the way of achieving it. t

* Perhaps the Communists, before they attach too much importance to ex­
pressionis t realism, should stop talking about it in a way more suitable to the
eighteenth century, before there were such things as photography or cin­
e ma . Maybe it does not really matter if Russian painting i s second·rate pro­
vided Russia gives us first-rate cinema. Eisenstein is her Tintoretto.
t There is room, nevertheless, for a study of the psychology of the lesser
p lastic arts, the mold i ng of death masks for example, which likewise involves a
certain automatic process. One might consider photography in this sen se as a
molding, the taking of an imp re ssion , by the manipulation of l ight .

12
 The Ontology of the Photographic Image
This is why the conflict between style and likeness is a relatively
modern phenomenon of which there is no trace before the inven­
tion of the sensitized plate. Clearly the fascinating objectivity of
Chardin is in n o sense that of the photographer. The ninetee n th
century saw the real beginnings of the crisis of realism of which
Picasso is now the mythical central figure and which put to the test
at one and the same time the conditions determining the formal
existence of the plas tic arts and their sociological roots . Freed from
the "resemblance c o mple x , " the modern painter abandons it to the
masses who, henceforth, identify resemblance on the one hand with
photography and on the other with the kind of p ai nting which is
related to photograp h y .
Originality in p hoto g r aphy as distinct from originalit y in paint­
ing lies in the essen tially objective character of pho tography . [Bazin
here makes a poi nt of the fact that the lens, the basis of photogra­
phy, is in French called the " obj e ctif, " a nuance that is lost in
English .-TR. ] For the first time, between the o r i gi n a ti n g object
and its reproduction there inte r ve n es only the instrumentality of a
no nl ivin g agent. For the first time an i m a ge of the world is formed
automatically, without the creative intervention of man. The per­
sonality of the photographer enters into the proceedings only in his
selection of the obj e ct to be photographed and by way of the
purpose he has in mind . Alth ough the final result may reflect some­
thing of his personality, this does not play the same role as is pl ayed
by th at of the painter . All the arts arc; based on the presence of
m an, only p hotography derives an advantage from his absence .
Photography affects us like a pheno menon in nature, like a fl ower
or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins · are an insep­
arable part of their b e a ut y .
This prod u ction by auto m atic means has radically affected our
psychology of the image . The objective nature of photography con­
fers on it a quality of credibility absent from all other picture­
maki ng. In s pi t e of any objections our critical spirit may offe r , we
are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced ,

13
What Is Cinema?
actu al ly re-prese nt ed, set before us, that is to say, in time and space.
Photography enjoys a certain advantage in virtue of this trans fer ­

ence of re ality from the thing to its reprodu ction. *

A very fai thful drawing may actually tell us mo re about the
model but despite the promptings of our critical intelligence it will
never have the irrational power of the ph ot ograp h to bear aw ay our
faith.
Besides, p ainti ng is, afte r all, an inferior way of m aking like­
nesses, an ersatz of the pro ce ss es of rep roductio n . Only a p h oto
­

gr aph ic lens can give us the kind of image of the object that is
c apabl e of satisfying the dee p need man has to substitute for it
s om ething more th an a mere approxim ation , a kind of decal or
transfer. The p h o togr a phic image is the obje ct itself, the obj ect
freed from the condition s of time and space that govern it. No
m a t ter how fuzzy, distorted, or discolored, no matter how lacking
in documentary value the i m a ge may be, it shares, by virtue of the
very proc es s of its becoming, the being of the model of which it is
the reproduction ; it is the model .
Hence the charm of fam ily albums. Those grey or sepia
shadows, phantomlike and almost undecipherable, are no longer
traditional family portraits but r ather the dis turbi ng presence of
lives h alted at a set mo me n t in their dura t i on, freed from their
des tiny ; not, however, by the presti ge of art but by the power of an
i m p a s s ive mechanical process : for photogr aphy does not create
eternity, a s art does, it embalms time, re s cuing it simply from its
proper corrup tion .
Viewed in this pe rsp ective, the cinema is objectivity in time .
The film is no lo n ger content to preserve the o bj ect, enshrouded as
it we re in an instant, as the bodies of insects are p res erv ed intact,
out of the distant past, in amber. The film delivers b aroque art from

* Here one should really examine the psychology of relics and souvenirs
which likewise enjoy the advantages of a transfer of reality stemming from
the "mummy-complex." Let us merely note in passing that the Holy Shroud
of Turin combines the features alike of relic and photograph.

14
 The Ontology of the Photographic Image
its convulsive catal eps y . Now, for the first time, the im age of things
is likewise the image of their duration, change mummified as it
were. Those categories of resemblance which determine the species
photographic image likewise, then, determine the ch a racter of its
aes th eti c as distinct from that of painting. II<
The aesthetic q u alitie s of pho to gr ap h y are to be s o ugh t in i ts
power to lay the realities. It is n ot for me to separate off, in the
bare
complex fabric of the objecti ve world, here a refl ecti on on a damp
sidewalk, there the ge s tur e of a child. Only the impassive lens,
stripping its object of all th os e ways of seeing it, th o s e piled-up
preconceptions, that spiritu al dust and grime w i th which my eyes
hav e covered it, is a bl e to present it in al l its virginal purity to
my attention and cons equen tly to my love. By the power of pho­
tograp hy the n atu ral image of a world th a t we neither know nor
,

can see, n a tu r e at last does m ore than imitate art : she im i t ates the
artist.
P h o to grap h y can even surpass art in creative power. The
aesth e tic world of the painter is of a different kind from that of t h e
world about him. a substantially and essen­
Its boundaries enclose
ti al l y different microcosm. The p hotogr ap h as such and the o bject
in its elf share a common being, after the fashion of a finge rprint.
W h e re fo re, p h o t ograph y actually contributes something to the
order of natural creation instead of p r ovi d ing a substitute for it.
The surrealists had an inkling of this whe n they looked to the
photographic p l ate to provi d e them with the ir monstrosities and for
this reason : the surrealist does not consider his aesthetic purpose
a nd the m ech anic al effect of the image on our i m agi natio n s as
things a p ar t. For him, the logical distinction between w h at is im­
.

'
aginary and what is real tends to d i sappear . Every image is to be

• I use the term category h e re in the sense a t t ached to it by M. Gou h i er

in his book on the theater in which he distinguishes between the dramatic and
the aesthetic categories. Just as dramatic tension has n o artistic value, the per­
fection of a reproduction is not to be ide ntifi ed with beauty. It constitutes
ra ther the prime matter, so to spe ak , on which the artistic fact is recorded.

15
What Is Cinema?
seen as an obj ect and every obj ect as an image. Hence photography
ranks high in the order of surrealist creativity because it produces
an image that is a reality of nature, namely, an hallucination that is
also a fact. The fact that s u rre alist painting combines tricks of
visual decep ti on with meticulous attention to detail substantiates
this.
So, photography is clearly the most important event in the his­
tory of pl astic arts. Simultaneously a liberation and a fulfillment,
it has freed Western painting, once and for all, from its obsession
with realism and allowed it to recover its aes the tic autonomy.
I m press ionis t re al ism, offe ring science as an alibi, is at the
opposite extreme from eye-deceiving trickery. Only when form
ceases to have any imitative value can it be swallowed up in color.
So, when form, in the person of cezanne, once more regains pos­
session of the canvas there is no longer any question of the illusions
of the ge om etr y of p ers p ect ive . The painting, being confronted in
the mechanically produced image with a competitor able to reach
out b e yon d b aroque resemblance to the very identity of the model,
w as compelled into the category of object. Henceforth Pascal's con­
demnation of painting is itself rendered vain since the photograph
allows us on the one hand to admire in reproduction something that
our eyes alone could not have taught us to love, and on the other, to
admire the painting as a thing in itself whose relation to something
in nature has ceased to be the justification for its existence.
On the other hand, of course, cinema is also a language.

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