The work examines the philosophical and media-theoretical dimensions of photography and positions the medium as a central node in contemporary debates about reality, truth and power. It is organised into a series of chapters that draw on key theorists such as Marshall McLuhan, Vilém Flusser, Jean Baudrillard and Hito Steyerl to illuminate the complex interactions between technology, society and perception.
Photography is seen as a point of rupture between objective reality and subjective construction. With reference to Flusser and Lacan, the question is raised as to whether the photographic apparatus has now taken control of human creativity by forcing us into a binary world that blurs reality and fiction. Zen Buddhism and iconological concepts (such as Nam June Paik’s ‘TV Buddha’) shed light on the question of the immanence of the image and the possibility of pure, non-symbolic vision.
The investigation of the ‘mania of the authentic’ emphasises how documentary photography oscillates between power (potestas) and creative possibility (potentia). In doing so, the work criticises the construction of truth as a political instrument and examines the role of documentary aesthetics in the creation of alternative realities. The digital transformation has radically changed the materiality and truth of photography. The pixels as the smallest units of information are understood, in the sense of Adrian Sauer, as the building blocks of a universal digital ‘photographic universe’.
The work concludes with the insight that photography as a medium of opposition and reflection harbours potential for resistance and creative reinvention despite its appropriation by technical and economic structures.