Photography: theory, interrupted?

Abstract

I diagnose a state of the art in photography theories, in view of the symptoms of an “interruption” of its discourse, in the limit between two beacons that guided it, since the 1980s, namely: the emphasis on technical devices of visualization, and its semiotic corollary of indexicality. From the starting point of theoretical discourses of history and art criticism, and also the instituting force of the work of photographers-artists, I construct a counter-discourse to this dominance of visual devices, situating visual aisthésis (and its mediation by art history) as alternative parameters for reallocating a genuinely pragmatic and phenomenological inquiry about the experience of photographic images.