THE METAMORPHIC NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Abstract

Since the 1980s, and increasingly accentuated, the universe of photography has undergone profound modifications due to the entry into the scene of images produced or processed computationally, including synthetically manipulated photography. This has provoked a lot of debate among image theorists, especially photography theorists. After presenting the terms of this debate, with attention focused on photography and the Flusserian notion of apparatus, this article goes on to discuss the conceptual uncertainties about the ontological and semiotic categories of photography, uncertainties caused by its metamorphic character that put in crisis the dominant theoretical paradigm of the indexical character of photography.