Tout Ce Qui Est Anachronique Est Obsce'

One Day, Quite Some Time Ago, I Happened On A Photograph Of Napoleon’s Youngest Brother, Jerome, Taken In 1852. And I Realized Then, With An Amazement I Have Not Been Able To Lessen Since: ‘i Am Looking At Eyes That Looked At The Emperor.’ Sometimes I Would Mention This Amazement, But Since No One Seemed To Share It, Nor Even To Understand It (life Consists Of These Little Touches Of Solitude), I Forgot About It.

Language Is Neither Reactionary Nor Progressive; It Is Quite Simply Fascist; For Fascism Does Not Prevent Speech, It Compels Speech.

Eiffel Saw His Tower In The Form Of A Serious Object, Rational, Useful; Men Return It To Him In The Form Of A Great Baroque Dream Which Quite Naturally Touches On The Borders Of The Irrational ... Architecture Is Always Dream And Function, Expression Of A Utopia And Instrument Of A Convenience.

I Want A History Of Looking. For The Photograph Is The Advent Of Myself As Other: A Cunning Dissociation Of Consciousness From Identity. Even Odder: It Was Before Photography That Men Had The Most To Say About The Vision Of The Double. Heautoscopy Was Compared With An Hallucinosis; For Centuries This Was A Great Mythic Theme.

For Me The Noise Of Time Is Not Sad: I Love Bells, Clocks, Watches — And I Recall That At First Photographic Implements Were Related To Techniques Of Cabinetmaking And The Machinery Of Precision: Cameras, In Short, Were Clocks For Seeing, And Perhaps In Me Someone Very Old Still Hears In The Photographic Mechanism The Living Sound Of The Wood.