The language of things is constructed
by narratives which are always in flux. The language of things
is often blunt, vulgar, and predetermined; but it is also magical,
poetic, vital, and sensual. In any case, the language of things
is spoken here, it is our lingua franca.
Photography provides a good vantage point from which to observe
people engaged in the act of observing the world and collecting
phenomena. In William Henry Fox Talbot's Calotypes—The
Library
(1845) and The Breakfast Table (1840), and Daguerre's Shells
and Fossils (1839)—we see illustrated the curatorial
nature of photography—a medium concerned, to a large degree,
with preserving
the present (no matter how ordinary) and cataloguing phenomena.
From Daguerre to Bernd and Hilla Becher, the ideology of the
photographer
as collector, and the collector as savior, has played an important
role in shaping the nature and history of photography, and
consequently
of our perception of the modern world.
The "series" is the
backbone of photo-sensibility, and like the collection, it implies
a belief in scientific method. "One" example is not sufficiently
evidential ("one" might be a coincidence), but "many,"
repeatedly, are compelling——they become proof.
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