What the photographer does: A conversation with Michael Fried
Photographing ordinary subjects with no particular drama was a response to what sometimes appeared to me as a limit: the fact that the photographs I made in the context of news events drew their strength from that of the situations themselves. I thought this was too simple, that ultimately a powerful subject weakens the image. What creates the irreducibility of the photograph is the mechanical trace of the experience, which gives it a value of enunciation. A photograph is the product of a gaze, a moment, and things; it’s the actualisation of presence. But the technical determination of the photographic tool on the one hand and the subordination to the contingencies of the real on the other reduce the perimeter of “making” and give the unconscious a major role. In a way, all that remains for the photographer is the unconscious.