Towards a Philosophy of Photography

by Vilem Flusser

Media philosopher Vilém Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography. An analysis of the medium in terms of aesthetics, science and politics provided him with new ways of understanding both the cultural crises of the past and the new social forms nascent within them. Flusser showed how the transformation of textual into visual culture (from the linearity of history into the two-dimensionality of magic) and of industrial into post-industrial society (from work into leisure) went hand in hand, and how photography allows us to read and interpret these changes with particular clarity.

• ISBN13: 9781780232447
• Publish Date: 28 March 2013 (first published 1 October 2000)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Reaktion Books
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 96
• Language: English

Reviews

[Joséphine]

Actual rating: 4.5 stars

Initial thoughts: I expected this book to be rooted more in theory. Instead, Flusser set out to contribute hypotheses to the discourse of photography. He did mention this in the foreword though, so that was clear from the beginning. Towards a Philosophy of Photography is not solely about photography but about the deconstruction of information—how it's encoded and decoded, the cultural influences and how it is conveyed. Flusser broke down photography into the image, the apparatus and the functionary/photographer, which added much clarity to his discussion.

When he did refer to other thinkers like Marx and Kafka, his survey of their theories in relation to photography were extremely brief. They would've benefited a clearer analysis but that wasn't Flusser's intention, thus he didn't even include a bibliography at the end.