An Image of Death, an Image of Life, and Nothing In Between: Juxtaposing Blanchot’s and Bazin’s Ontological Approaches to the Image

This article juxtaposes two seminal texts on the ontology of the image published in post-war France: Maurice Blanchot’s ‘Les Deux Versions de l’imaginaire’ (1951) and André Bazin’s ‘Ontologie de l’image photographique’ (1945). Although these essays evince an astonishing similarity — both aim to answer related questions, namely ‘What is the image?’ and ‘What is the film image?’, both draw upon Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux, and both identify the image’s being with the power of death —, they arrive at fundamentally different and even opposed conclusions. By negotiating their similarities and differences, this article explores how Blanchot’s approach may be read as a helpful complication of Bazin’s exultant celebration of photography and the film image and, conversely, how Bazin may provide a key for understanding the fundamental antagonism of Blanchot’s bipartite image.