Last night I went to bed intending to think about a lot of things. And then I fell asleep.

— Michelangelo Anotonioni, from L’Avventura

Der Refrain aus einem Lied von Trenet kam ihm immer wieder in den Sinn, seit er es am Nachmittag auf der Autobahn im Radio gehört hatte, und er sagte sich, das “Foto, das alte Foto aus meiner Jugend”, von dem dort die Rede war, werde schon bald für die junge Generation keine Bedeutung mehr haben. Die Farben der Gegenwart für immer: Die Kamera als Tiefkühltruhe.

— Marc Augé, Nicht-Orte

Brodersen had awaited that line of attack. That was my own offhand example. Calm down. But okay, here `tis again. But tell us, Joelle. Navigation is yours, then, Langendijk said formally. Archer communicates secretly, with the secret connivance of the watchship captain in the Solar System- communicates secretly with his secret masters, who tell him to take us to a secret place? Isn’t that a little melodramatic? Earnestly: Think, too- the law of space is above politics. You don’t find any of this unthinkable, do you? N-no. As captain of a watchcraft, Archer has authority over me, he said. Good Lord, you can’t mean that, Second Engineer Torsten Sverdrup protested. That was very soon after its formation. Which is a logical non sequitur, actually. What are you free to tell me? I presume you can give me some argument, some reason to dog my hatch. The wealthiest man on Demeter is not altogether a private citizen. Finally he enlisted in the Emergency Corps of the World Union Peace Command. Not quite a surprise. Prepare to obey his instructions. Is he? I don’t pretend to be very sensitive where people are concerned, but I have had some exposure to cliques and cabals on high political levels.

— from Spam

Das Fettauge schaut in den Himmel und weiß nichts von der Suppe.

“Im noman, my name is noman”
but Wanjina is, shall we say, Ouan Jin
or the man with an education
and whose mouth was removed by his father
because he made too many things
whereby cluttered the bushman’s baggage
vide the expedition of Frobenius pupils about 1938
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++to Auss’ralia
Ouan Jin spoke and thereby created the named
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++thereby making clutter
the bane of men moving
and so his mouth was removed
as you will find it removed in his pictures

— Ezra Pound, Pisan Cantos

Nothing ever gets solved. We just get frustrated, or bored and tired, and eventually we just move on, leaving things without answers behind until the whole concept of answers becomes dubious. What to answer? What to question? Move on from what exactlly?

But what is “the problem of photography”? Copy? Pointing? Truth? Reality? Intensity? Discovery? Fake? Connection? Revelation? Rapture? Document? Bearing Witness? To what exactly?

or to be more precise: What is it about photography that makes all these things come out, as all of these seem to pose the more obvious questions of: What is it, that you see? (so it really is a question of ontology? So either the question of “what is” is more interesting as it seems, or photography does not care about “what is” and cares more about “what appears” and that is the more meaningful question… (but we do not photograph what we see: The Single-lens-Reflex, that closes the mirror and you do not actually see/are not present  the moment when the pictures is taken….) – so photography fills the gaps of our seeing?

Nothing ever gets solved. We just grow tired or bored or forget the question and move on.

every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible.”

— Edward Steichen

Are the problems of photography solved? You do not write any more about the how ad why of photography: Does this mean you are done with trying to rationalize what you are doing? Does this also mean you are done with photography?

There is this tendency – best embodied in the construction of pornography – in western societies to expose everything. Nothing can be hidden, everything shown is never enough: What appears is good, what is good, appears.

(the drive to see more deeply linked to the drive to earn more, have more, buy more, own more, that also is bottomless and can never be exhausted: The strategy to overcome the disappointment of everything that is shown is to point to something that is ommitted, replace what is show with the promise of something that is not (yet) shown.) An overwhelming more, that is oblivious to any content: More sunset, more flower, more pain, more torn apart limbs, more explosions, more sex, more everything more everything more everything (and repeat and try to get even higher: Seeing is as much as an addiction with hangovers, disgust of sight, contempt for seeing, renouncing seeing, blame etc., only to enter the circle again.)