Consciousness as a Fundamental Attribute

A reproduced plate from a magazine, posted on a noticeboard, writing engraved in a plastered wall, a black curtain ... To what extent can we still call that photography? Today, to be concerned with the theory of photography is just as suspect as to be a photographer. Both entail certain preconditions of photographic thinking. Jiří Thýn has been observing this for a long time.
One of the typical expressions of such thinking is an interest in the thematization of time. The endeavour to make a slice of time or, possibly, to demonstrate that something like that cannot really be done. After all, ‘now’ is not a point; it has duration; similarly, the camera shutter is subject to the laws of physics and the shortest exposure takes a certain time.
Even a reproduction is a photographic topic par excellence. It takes an artwork out of context, strips it of its original purpose and often also of its frame, and thereby also strips it of its own topical character. This meaning can then imperiously be turned upside down when uniqueness is ascribed to infinitely reproduced photographs.
Some things have to be seen, because it is difficult to express them in the logic of words. Photography has the ability to overturn our conception of the world when what was its image can change into its pre-image.
The camera is aimed; the shutter release is pressed ... But this aggression can also be turned against photography itself. By a violent cut, a reproduced work is stripped of its purpose, and is forced to communicate a different message; it is relocated in space and time, and is, by means of art, returned to reality.

Hana Buddeus