DISCURSIVE SPACES
The discussion of discursive spaces in photogra-
phy must deal with the ambiguity resulting from
the mixing of heterogeneous families of concepts,
namely the textual and the visual. This ambiguity
is inherent to the concept of a discursive space in
itself: is it the space created by a form of discourse
or is it the space in which a form of discourse is
created? The concept of discursive spaces in
photography thus contains two angles, as the dis-
courseonphotography and the discourseofpho-
tography. Of course the discourse (as meaning or
message)ofphotography is always framed by the
place attributed to photography as a signifying
practice, that is, by the discourse (as conceptuali-
zation)onphotography.
A major shift in the conceptualization of photo-
graphy between the nineteenth and the twentieth
century happened because of an artistic interest in
what had been so far a scientific curiosity. Concep-
tualized as a tool of scientific investigation because
of its mechanical and physical (orindexical, in the
taxonomy of the American philosopher Charles
Sanders Peirce) relationship to its subject, photo-
graphy is a door toward spaces that can then be
inventoried and archived according to the logic of
scientific discourse. Conceptualized as the expres-
sion of an ‘‘artist’s’’ vision, the photograph
becomes the site, the space of artistic creation func-
tioning within the values of an aesthetic discourse.
In a chapter entitled ‘‘Photography’s Discursive
Spaces’’ in her bookThe Originality of the Avant-
Garde and other Modernist Myths(1985), Rosalind
Krauss points out the tension between these two
discourses in which photography keeps moving.
She denounces an effort in the twentieth century
to reinscribe photography within the paradigms
invented by the discourses of art and its history
and to eliminate the purely archival sphere to
which nineteenth century photography belonged.
The fact is that photography always parti-
cipates in a multitude of discourses. Roland
Barthes described the photograph as ‘‘a message
without a code’’ (as opposed to a textual message,
which is an entirely coded way of communica-
tion), since it is a perfect analog of the object
presented and one does not need an interpreta-
tion, a relay, that is a code, to understand it. As an
‘‘image without a code,’’ the photograph becomes
the receptacle for a variety of codes as it enters the
discourses of many different domains, be it art,
sociology, psychoanalysis, anthropology, etc.
These discourses with their own jargon, metho-
dology, and scope recuperate the photograph for
their own purposes and define it in their own
languages. With its cross-disciplinary vocation,
the photographic image is thus the postmodern
representationpar excellence.
As an object, a physical space in itself, the flat
surface of the photograph follows the vicissitudes
of the varying degrees of importance attributed to
the cultural concept of depth. The twentieth cen-
tury opened with the Freudian revolution and the
discovery of the unconscious. Any surface became
suspect and pregnant with underlying signifi-
cation. Entering into the modern age of introspec-
tion, depth became the warrant of truth as
opposed to the deceptiveness of appearances.
The belief in the possibility of access to a latent
layer of meaning slowly dwindled in the course of
the twentieth century. New psychoanalytic frame-
works, like Jacques Lacan’s reinterpretation of
Freud, while recognizing the existence of an
unconscious and even the evidence of its struc-
ture, denied its readability. Postmodern thinkers
like Jean Baudrillard brought the attention back
to the surface of things, including images, by
searching for working strategies rather than for
truth:whatworksiswhatistrue,andappearances
are what we work with. Similarly, the photograph
as a space of signification, a place from which
meanings are inferred, oscillates between concep-
tions of it as a flat space or as a deep-layered
space. A photograph as a layered space becomes
a place of interpretation, of discovery, a space
where not only the subject but also the subjectiv-
ity of the photographer can be seen, a place of
meaning readable like a text. Freudian critics like
Victor Burgin see the photograph as being all text,
to be deciphered. As a flat surface, the photo-
graph is just a silent reflection and a critic like
Roland Barthes tries to see it as just that, all
image, purely denotative. Both approaches al-DISCURSIVE SPACES