Still Searching…

<p>All that distinguishes a photo as image and a photo as component of the mass image is the simple act of attention. Among all the billion images uploaded, stashed or discarded, only a tiny few secure even a few moments of active contemplation.</p>

<div>Without cows and their appetite there would be no photography as we know it, argues Nicole Shukin in Animal Capital. The scientists at Kodak’s research laboratory had a problem at the beginning of the 20th century: The gelatin used by Kodak to bind light-sensitive agents to a base had produced results of poor quality. Only after mustard seeds had been added to the cows’ feed were satisfactory photographic results achieved. If cows hadn’t accepted their new diet, the photographic and cinematic history of the world would probably have been quite different.<br><br></div>

<div>There are utopian spaces knitted into the fabric of the seemingly pessimistic film <em>La Haine.</em> One famous scene in La Haine condenses this “fleeting utopia” more then any other moment in the film: Hubert packages and smokes weed in his bedroom, listening to “That Loving Feeling,” sung by Isaac Hayes, and looks outside the window of his “rabbit hutch” (cage à lapins – as the identical flats of the cité are called). <br><br></div>

<div>In ancient Roman maps, terra incognita at the edge of the Empire were marked with the notation hinc sunt leones – “here are lions”. Specific zootopes, animal-places as places of or for animals, are always connected to certain zootropes, animal metaphors and animal images. This is also the case for unknown places, to which the Roman maps seem to attest.</div>

<div>Imagine if Ice-T, the notorious rapper of the track “Cop Killer” were a cop. That, in fact, has been the case for the last 16 years – at least in his role as police detective Odafin Tutuola in one of the most successful U.S. television series of all time: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. While Tutuola is the second-longest-serving cast member, it is only in the handful of episodes focusing on the only black member of the elite squad chasing rape victims that some information about his personal background is revealed. </div>

<div>If one thinks about photography in medium-specific terms, digitization actually hasn’t introduced any significant challenges to the essence of the photographic moment. Cameras and iPhones that produce digital photographs still contain optical lenses that record light from which an image is generated.<br><br></div>