Instead of presenting the world, photographs represent it. They put themselves in place of the world. There is a tremendous inversion of the vector of “realness”: real is not the signified, but the signifier.
Black and white photographs, lacking color, can clearly highlight the shift in what we consider to be real. A black and white world does not exist. But black and white photographs exist. It is that exact contradictory characteristic which can lead us to a deeper access to the hard core of the photography medium that is performing life.
