Photography of Thought (De fotografie van de gedachte)

Photography and writing both serve as tools of memory, making
available a permanent record of fleeting experience, yet both
photographers and writers know full well what they setdown on
paper or film is only an approximation, is already a mediation
of the immediacy of their thoughts and feelings. There exists no
apparatus to directly transcribe the contents of the mind. The
practice of automatism, however, attempts precisely to achieve
this. The author speculates on automatic writing and automatic
photography, and on relations between photography and the
unconscious. Surrealist photographers / writers examined are:
Man Ray and his Rayographs, Breton and his use of photographs by
Man Ray and Boiffard. Freud's use of photographic practice as
simile to thinking and the relation between conscious and the
unconsciousness is interpreted. The 'Transformance'-project of
Mueller-Pohle and recent work by Susan Hiller with the
photoautomat and her automatic 'texts' are discussed.
(Dutch/English)