text; one can see an image without necessarily
making anything out of it. In other words, the
image does not explain but opens to explanations.
The theoretical discourse on photography keeps
re-articulating the terms in which a photograph
enters any type of discourse. W.J.T. Mitchell semi-
irritatedly introduces his essay on ‘‘pictorial texts’’ in
Picture Theoryreflecting on the fact that the inter-
pretation of images happens through the medium of
different forms of verbal discourse but the interpre-
tation of text is never done by means of pictures (p.
209). Rosalind Krauss, in her preface toLe Photo-
graphique, pour une the ́orie des e ́carts(1990) (a col-
lection of articles written between 1977 and 1984 and
only published here as a body, in their French trans-
lations with an introduction by Hubert Damish)
denies that photography can possibly be, or ever
has been, an object of researchper se.It always
becomes an access to something else, a kind of grid
or filter through which one can organize the data of
another field. She finishes this analysis by perempto-
rily stating that there is nothing to say, at least on
photography, a position which explains her title,
Pour une The ́orie des e ́carts[for a theory of discre-
pancies/displacements]. Theonof ‘‘on photography’’
has more and more become an object of reconsidera-
tion since Susan Sontag’s celebrated essay, On
Photography(1977). The foreword of Abigail Solo-
mon-Godeau’sPhotography at the Dock(1991) pre-
sents the scope of this collection of essays on
photographs as a displacement similar to the one
advocated by Krauss. It is a sort of metacriticism
that ‘‘focuses for the most part not on the photo-
graphs themselves but on the discourse of photogra-
phy as it has been constructed in recent past’’ (p.
xiv). In the discursive space of theory, metacriticism
or metalanguage, photography seems to be literally
always the thing ‘‘next to’’ which there is something
to say. The theoretical discourse on photography, a
discourse that tries to conceptualize the place and the
essence of photography independently from, but also
within, all the other discourses (of history, art his-
tory, science, sociology, psychology, anthropology,
literature, literary criticism) is the only discourse that
repeatedly places photography outside of its scope,
outside of the realm of the text, but enacting then in
the texts that it produces the very paradox that it
seems to denounce. W.J.T. Mitchell who wants to
find a way out of the pure image concept or the pure
language which both appear at the same time lacking
and irreducible comes to this solution inPicture
Theory(1994): ‘‘What if the only adequate formula-
tion of the relation of photography and language
was a paradox: photography both is and is not a
language’’ (pp. 281–283). The paradox is however an
acceptable state of being when you value appear-
ances, surfaces, strategies above the search for a
latent explanation for all things.
Discoursingwithphotography resembles the
excitement and vitality of staging a combat.
The creation of oppositions and paradoxes
fuels the energy of their own discourses. As
Baudrillard points out inLes Strate ́gies Fatales
(1983), oppositions never resolve themselves,
they call each otherad infinitum.The discursive
spaces of photography are thus ever expanding.
Yves-AntoineClemmen
Seealso:Barthes, Roland; Burgin, Victor; Concep-
tual Photography; Deconstruction; Krauss, Rosa-
lind; Postmodernism; Representation; Semiotics;
Sontag, SusanFurther Reading
Baetens, Jan.Du roman-photo. Paris: les impressions nou-
velles, 1992.
Barthes, Roland.L’obvie et l’obtus. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1982.
Mitchell, W.J.T.Picture Theory. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994.
Mitchell, W.J.T., ed.The Language of Images. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Rabb, Jane M., ed.Literature and Photography, Interactions
1840–1990. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Krauss, Rosalind E.Le Photographique: pour une the ́orie
des e ́carts. Paris: Macula, 1990.
———.The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist
Myths. Cambridge, Massachussetts: The MIT Press, 1985.
Price, Mary.The Photograph, a Strange Confined Space.
Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994.DISCURSIVE SPACES