Photography and imagination

This article is written from the standpoint of a photographer. It does not offer a systematic approach to the relationship between photography and imagination, nor does it advance a specific thesis. The ontological identity of photography – its singular way of affirming a presence – serves as the point of departure: it is this fundamental trait that appears to determine imagination. Drawing on concrete cases, the text explores how this specificity can give rise to different imaginative acts: whether in the form of a sensory experience (tactile, olfactory, auditory); or in the reverie of wishing to cross into and inhabit the interior of a photograph; or in the attempt to fictionalize it; or, finally, in the mode of material imagination – the Bachelardian imagination. In a final, contrary movement, the photograph is considered inaccessible, blocking imagination – the image in which photography’s specificity seems no longer to have a place.