been called the ‘‘paradox of photography.’’ Could
it be more philosophical? It is Barthes in particular
who opposes the ‘‘doxa.’’ The ‘‘doxa’’ is the view
that derives its strength from power in the broadest
sense of the word: public opinion, the view of the
silent majority, the narrow-minded view, every-
thing that is so-called ‘‘natural,’’ the violence of
prejudice, that which one maintainsisso because
itisso. The metaphorical sense of the word ‘‘para’’
in Greek is ‘‘against.’’ Para tein doxan means
‘‘against expectations.’’ This last word at the same
time makes the link with psychology, which
assumes that our perception is determined by
expectation. The paradox starts us thinking, in
order to adjust our expectation to the actual situa-
tion. If not we are ‘‘dogmatic,’’ a word with the
same stem as ‘‘doxa,’’ which refers to the unwill-
ingness to change one’s opinion. Barthes argues for
paradoxical thinking. Photography states this pa-
radox most acutely. Every photo is a ‘‘doxa’’: it is
reality the way it is, in many cases even with
demonstrative force.
However, every photo is a paradox: it is a picture
of reality, or in other words, it is a way of seeing.
And that should not be taken too simply, as no
more than a relativization by accentuating the fact
that it is a way of looking, coupled with the convic-
tion that it actually is reality. Its ‘‘image-dom’’
implies that it is not reality, that it is a way of
representation, that in our pan-photographic cul-
ture we have learnt that this reality as such cannot
say anything with any certainty that we do not know
from other sources of information, such as direct
observation or verbal explanation.
A philosophy of European photography is part
of cultural philosophy when photography is con-
sidered as a mass-culture phenomenon, and part
of art philosophy when ‘‘art photography’’ is con-
cerned. In my opinion it would at this point be
wrong to make a major distinction, on the basis
of either philosophy or photography. Art philo-
sophy may be considered part of cultural philo-
sophy. In the case of photography one might
ask oneself whether the desire to be art is
important. Perhaps photography should just be
photography. In addition to this there is the
postmodern phenomenon of the blurring bound-
aries between art and mass culture. The latter is
becoming the object of or source of inspiration
for the former. And in its outdated modernism
art is becoming kitsch.
This is why a philosophy of the history of photo-
graphy comes down to asking the classic questions:
‘‘What are its characteristics? How can one inter-
pret it? What is its value? How does it function and
within which systems? How is meaning produced?
All this makes a contribution to the fundamental
philosophical question: what is photography?’’
In Europe we see that the ambivalence between
photography’s reference to reality and its openness
for the imaginary is especially interesting for artists
who are investigating how place and the perception
of it can be represented. Contemporary photogra-
phers are mainly concerned with conceptual re-
flections on the seamless transition between the
presentation and the representation of a place, the
documentation of an active, artistic re-arrangement
of a location or the construction of space, using
diverse media and thus crossing the border of two-
dimensional photography.
The field of hybrid rhetoric paradoxically unites
the diverse European countries that continue to
enjoy the differences of their collective experience.
Leaving the 1990s, when ‘‘visualism’’ was at stake,
the contemporary photographic practices of Nor-
dic and Eastern countries draw closer to the South
and Western aspiration to transgress medium-
bound, traditional art photography and move
toward critical reflections.
Perhaps we can end with a statement of the man
who offers us the red thread in our overview, Jean-
Claude Lemagny: ‘‘It is certainly clear that in the
eternal struggle between reality and the idea of it
that one constructs, reality must conquer the idea
and only that which Zarathustra calls ‘the sense of
the earth’ deserves to triumph.’’
JOHANSwinnen
Seealso: Barthes, Roland; Boltanski, Christian;
Brassaı ̈; Calle, Sophie; Cartier-Bresson, Henri; Con-
ceptual Photography; Dijkstra, Rineke; et Gilles,
Pierre; Faucon, Bernard; Fischli, Peter and Weiss,
David; Frank, Robert; Gursky, Andreas; Hers, Fran-
c ̧ios; History of Photography: Interwar Years; Klein,
William; Koudelka, Joseph; Magnum Photos; Mes-
sager, Annette; Museums: Europe; Parr, Martin;
Peress, Gilles; Propaganda; Ruff, Thomas; Struth,
Thomas; Tillmans, WolfgangEUROPE: AN OVERVIEW, PHOTOGRAPHY IN