i

Kairos
Phenomenology and Photography
by Chan-fai Cheung
with essays by
Hans Rainer Sepp and Kwok-ying Lau

Zeta Books
 ii iii

To

Jennifer, Felix, Katie, Joyce

Kairos:
Phenomenology and Photography
by Chan-fai Cheung

© Chan-fai Cheung, 2009

First electronic edition, 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication

may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any information
storage retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the copyright holder.

ISBN 978-976-1997-54-4

Design and Layout:

Samyu Graphic, Ivy Ling

Editor:
Esther Tsang

Publisher:
Zeta Books, Bucharest
www.zetabooks.com
 iv v

Contents Preface

Preface v

The Reality of a Photograph:

Chan-fai Cheung’s “The Photographer. In Kyoto” vi
Hans Rainer Sepp
The Greek has two concepts of time: chronos ( ) and kairos Phenomenology and photography are two of my passions in life. The
Interplay between the Visible and the Imaginary: ( ). Chronos refers to sequential or linear time, hence chronology, essays and photos in the following pages are the results of my applying
Notes towards a Phenomenological Approach to Photography x the measurement of time past, present and future. Kairos, however, means phenomenology in photography. I am conscious of the phenomenological
Kwok-ying Lau the right time, opportune and seasoned time. It refers to the right moment, seeing in photography and through the decisive moment, a photographic
the perfect time, the critical “now”. Chronological time is the existential phenomenon is let to be appeared and seen. Most photos, once so taken,
[ I. General ]
horizon from which we organize our life. Time, whether we are conscious can never be taken again at the same time and same place. In fact, a photo
Phenomenology and Photography: of its flow or not, determines our life as living from the past through the cannot be taken twice. Surely it can be reproduced and copied indefinitely
On Seeing Photographs and Photographic Seeing 002 but the original photo remains the only piece out of kairos.
present into the future. “All are in flux”, said Heraclitus. But there are
Photographs 010
important moments in our life that are so decisive that our life changes
[ II. Doors and Windows ] its course, irrevocably and irreversibly. These are moments of kairos, the Here I must express my sincere gratitude to my best friends, Hans Rainer
time that is taken and grasped by us to act on a determination. Perhaps Sepp and Kwok-ying Lau for their contributions of the essays included in
Separation and Connection:
Phenomenology of Door and Window 094 our life has been so changed for better or worse. But we do not know, this volume. Hans Rainer’s meticulous analysis of my photo taken in Kyoto
Photographs 102 because life is different after that decisive change and we cannot compare is a wonderful demonstration of applying phenomenology; whereas Kwok-
the otherwise. ying’s theoretical reflection on photography through phenomenological
[ III. Funerary Sculptures ] literature deserves once again my admiration for his philosophical mind.
Eros and Thanatos: Erotic Sculpture in Cemeteries Photography is a play of time and light. The amount of time allowing Without their contributions, this book would not live up to the title:
—Meditation on Love and Death 124 light to get into the camera determines the quality of the photograph. The phenomenology AND photography.
Photographs 132
speed meter of the camera is commensurate with chronological time. Hence
most photographs are taken as records of external events. However, if Last but not least, I have to thank Ms. Esther Tsang, the editor of this
[ IV. 30,000 Feet from Above ]
photography is seriously considered as art, then the clicking of the shutter volume, for her patience and professional expertise to actualize this
30,000 Feet from Above 164
by the conscientious photographer for a particular phenomenon through his project. To Ms. Ivy Ling and Mr. Billy Ling, I thank them sincerely for their
Photographs 166
photographic seeing is what Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment”, art work and enthusiasm for this book.
Descriptions of Photographs 184 i.e., kairos. All creative photographic works are products of kairos. 22 October 2009
 vi
The Reality of a Photograph Hans Rainer Sepp
Chan-fai Cheung’s “The Photographer. In Kyoto”
In 2006 the Hong Kong philosopher and photographer Chan-fai Cheung
shot the photo “The Photographer. In Kyoto”. This amazing photo has the
effect of a visual labyrinth. What do we see? Let us analyze this picture in
five steps.
[ First Step ]
The photo shows the dark blurred image of a man, probably the photographer,
who is standing in a street and is shooting a photo. But one cannot see
his camera because a second picture is exactly at the place where the
camera should be. This second picture shows a pin-sharp interior with a
person, probably a woman, sitting or standing by a table, with a bag and a
mass of waste packaging near to her. We cannot see that the photographer
holds up his camera but we see this second picture that he presents by
his raised arms. This picture is bathed in light: Behind the person we see
a door and a window of glass, and the sun is shining in. This interior is
surrounded by the orange colored frame of the door and the window so that
the whole gives the impression of a shining square box, which is exactly
the contrary to the “black box” of a camera. However, the interior of this
second picture is not limited by the orange frame; it has a foreground and
also a background.
The things in the foreground gradually disappear into darkness. We can
only recognize in parts two tables and chairs; on the tables are small
dishes, cups, pots, and a lot of wrapped paper. Right at the bottom part of
the floor are patterns of round circles. The foreground opens at the lower
edge of the bright box and runs up to us who are watching this all. At the
same time it flows over the open jacket of the photographer and loses itself
in the area where the floor of the interior, the pants of the photographer
and the street where he stands are merging into one another. This second
photo, the photo within the photo, forms a pyramid with the illuminated
box as the top and the patterned floor as the base. At the centre of the top
is the female person absorbed in her work.
Behind the woman, in her background, we see through the glasses of the
door and the window a lighted up place with a big blue vase and some
traces of green trees. However, in the middle of this bright area a dark
shadow of a human being appears on the door, just behind the head of
the woman. This figure has the same contours as the photographer. Does
he appear twice in this photo, not only in the first picture but also in the
second one? Obviously he does. Then there is a third picture within the
second one: The photo of the photographer shows how the photographer
shows a picture of an interior, and this interior shows within the frame of
its glass door a third picture that shows the photographer again.
And there is a triangle, beginning from the closed right eye of the
photographer and extending its two edges to the head of the woman and
to the double of himself, the photographer. This triangle cuts the top of
the pyramid that the second photo, the picture within the picture, forms
so that just this area of the whole picture catches our eyes first. Only
after that we might pay our attention to other details, to the interior, and
also to the surrounding where the photographer himself stands: the street
behind him; the two motorcycles on the curb, leaning on a big wall of
hewed ashlars bathed in bright sunshine and partially covered with green.
[ Second Step ]
Is this first attempt to describe what we see already satisfactory? It is
worrying that we do not yet know why we realize that the photographer
appears twice in this photo. And what are the relations both between
pictures one and two as well as between pictures two and three? We have
to explain why there are two more photos within a photo because it is not
normal that a photographer does not hold up his camera but a photo in
which he appears. To answer these questions three solutions are possible.
First, one could say that this is a kind of photomontage (we exclude the
case that this photo is simply a result of a digital manipulation). The
picture of the double of the photographer (picture three) is pasted into
the picture of the bright box (picture two), which is in turn pasted into
the photo (picture one) itself. However, this explanation does not really
work: We saw that the bright box located before its background continually
disappears into a foreground that blends with the photographer himself and
his surrounding. In addition, not only the open jacket of the photographer
but also his raised arms overlap the whole of the second picture, and only
the bright light of the box gives the impression that its contour separates
this picture from its surrounding.
Second, if this is not a photomontage because there is a overlapping of
several pictorial levels, then it could be a double or triple exposure. Indeed,
the parts where pictures one and two are overlaying each other could be
the result of multiple exposures. However, there is a pictorial conflict, and
furthermore a pictorial enigma that may be not explained by this model.
vii
The conflict means: When this photo is a multiple exposure there must not
be parts without traces of such exposure, otherwise it would be a mixture
between a photomontage and a multiple exposure. In fact, there are parts
without any multiple exposures: the background of the photographer itself,
the motorcycles, and the stonewall. But this could be objected by the
argument that the reason why we cannot see traces of a double exposure is
that the background is so intensively lighted up by the sun. Thus the thesis
of a pictorial conflict cannot be verified sufficiently.
And the enigma? The enigma concerns the double photographer. The
presence of this double will be not yet clear enough referring to the
possibility of a multiple exposure. The first photographer is a picture of
a photographer, but the second one is not simply a picture of him. The
second photographer, the photographer “behind” the glass door, actually
does not stand outside of the door. What is really outside is the blue vase,
and the second photographer rather looks like a ghost who rises out of this
wonder lamp. He is obviously a shadow, a reflection. Then it is cause to
assume that there are two different authors of these two photographs: The
first photographer is shot by another person who photographs him while
he is photographing; and the second photographer is a mirror image of the
first photographer who is photographing himself—at all a very peculiar
constellation for a double exposure.
Nevertheless, this could be a reliable trace to get onto a third solution:
Perhaps not only the second photographer is a reflection, maybe the whole
interior is reflected. But what is the stuff that reflects? When the interior
is a reflection that appears on the first photographer, between them there
must be a reflecting medium, be it a glass wall, a big window. Then the
photographer is looking from outside through a window, and we, from
inside, see how the inside behind us is reflected in the windowpane in
front of us, and through the transparency of the glass we can see both, the
photographed photographer and “on him” the subject that he takes. The
invisible glass medium is a borderline that both acts as a mediator between
the inner and the outer and separates the outer from the inner.
However, one important question is still unanswered: Who does take
the photograph of this photographer? Or is even the photographer
also a reflection? Does he photograph himself? And is also the second
photographer still a reflection—of the first one, and then a reflection
within the reflection of the interior? How is the first photographer able
 viii
to reflect himself and at the same time to take a picture of reflecting
his reflection within a reflected interior? This is a bewildering situation.
Let us get ready to begin again, starting with the thesis that the first
photographer is a self portrait.
[ Third Step ]
However, in order to understand that this is a self portrait we have to try
the big coup, a Copernican revolution: We totally retrace our position. The
starting question could be: When all what we see is the result of reflections,
are there parts in this photo that are not reflected? Of course, when
the photographer is a reflection, his background behind him, the whole
ensemble of the street, motorcycles, stonewall, must also be reflected. Are
there areas of no reflection?
Visualizing the new situation one must say that the function of the
transparent glass wall is kept on: It is reflecting. But what it reflects is
not longer the interior, it is the photographer himself. And this is the
big turn: We are not standing within the house any more. We are now
outside, becoming so to call the eye of the photographer who is taking a
photo of himself. The viewer of this photograph is exactly at that place
where the real photographer stands, and he sees how the photographer is
photographing himself, how his figure will be reflected by the pane of glass
in front of him that also reflects the background behind the photographer.
However, what the photographer catches sight of what is behind the glass
is not a reflection. It is real, real in the context of the photo: That is the
whole interior. We and the photographer are looking through the glass
at an interior with tables, chairs, dishes, cups and pots, and at a female
person in front of a glass door at the other side of this room. But this is
not the end: The look passes along this line and culminates in the shadow
in the glass, the second image of the photographer. The glass door reflects
the photographer a second time, so that his reflections encircle the inner
area from both sides, and the inner is real.
The big turn we did results firstly in a reversal of the inner-outer-relation
regarding the standpoint of the viewer, and secondly in a changing of
real and reflected elements: The reflected zones becomes reality, and the
real areas prove to be reflected. The photographer is nothing else than a
reflection, a shadow. His reflected figure is unsharp and dark: He holds
himself back, he is only a function of making visible, he unveils the pin-
sharp centre of the inside by his body who robs the outside light that
normally occupies the glass of the window and prevents to get a look inside.
Photography is a robbery of light—by shifting light to a certain area of a
photographically confirmed reality that coincides with the interested eyes
of the photographer. The moved light constitutes the motif, which is the
subject that will be focused as an object constituted by the “objective”,
i.e., the lens, “the camera’s eye”.
[ Fourth Step ]
On the contrary, the subject, i.e., the object for the eye of the camera, is
really a subject living in its own world and getting its own light by a lamp
hanging from the ceiling. The female person we see is lost in thought and
work. Though she is surrounded by two shadows, she is not bothered by the
fact that in this moment she is fixed by the shutter release of the camera.
Maybe the subject plays the stronger part of this drama: Even though the
camera tries to seize the subject, it gives the impression of unassailability
as if it can escape or has already escaped from being grasped by the
shutter. So one could say, that the same invisible glass window, the pivot
of this all, is able to unveil the subject as well as to protect it before
unveiling. This is the borderline where all begins and all will end, this is
the visible-invisible double of the camera’s eye and its transcending to its
subject—the border of photographing: the power of grasping a real object
and at the same time the impossibility of getting it as an actually real one.
This paradox describes the existential situation of the photographer: Only
in such situation where he encounters the other, he or she can experience
his or her border—as the basic condition of photography. Cheung’s
photograph shows this all in one. It shows how the eye of the camera
transcends to the other and how it will be reflected back to itself, so
that the photographer encounters himself in a way that he encircles his
subject without the ability to seize it really because the other and his own
surrounding are the only real (not reflected) topics in this picture. And
even a little nuance more: Since the second shadow of the photographer
which turns up on the glass door behind the real person is a reflection at
the inner side of the windowpane, one could say that the photographer has
put himself in prison, that is in the shining box as the counterpart of the
black box of the camera. The transcending intention of the photographer
will be stopped only by its own mirror image—and nevertheless, he is not
narcissistically looking at himself in the mirror because the camera’s eye
presents the other, but the other as a such who has evaded the sphere of
the photographer’s influence.
[ Fifth Step ]
What is real? The photographer—standing in a street, in front of a stonewall
and motorcycles—and his mirror image in the background door alike are
reflections. Real—of course real in the photo, meaning “not-reflected”—is
only the interior. Real in this sense are also the blue vase behind the glass
door and the few traces of green one can see through the glass window.
These things encircle a private outside in contrast to the interior as the
business area of the shop—an outside which is marked off by a small inner
courtyard so that the mirror image on the glass door is caught in a private
area, between the inner and the outer of such a private space.
However, this real (not-reflected) zone of the photo is not actually real—
it is only a photo of a real entity. We have to distinguish two different
modes of being real: such that is meant, signed, pictured, photographed
etc. as “real”, and such that is beyond of such kinds of “sense” the
factum brutum itself. A photo (and a picture at all) cannot show such a
brute real since it is a picture of this or that; only the picture itself, the
piece of paper, canvas or stone, is as such real in the second sense. It
follows from this that the other who is visualized in this photo cannot
be actually caught by it because photography has basically no capacity
to seize a real being.
Is this the whole relationship to reality? Only the negative result that a
photo does not present real things though itself is photographed by a real
person? One could also ask: Is all in the photo what the photo belongs? Or
is there something that is neither in the photo nor outside in the sense of
the real surrounding of the photo-world? Is there an entity that is in and
out—paradoxically outside at the inner side, on the border that the living
body is? Of course, one could say, the other person, the woman, who is
represented in this photo, is actually a living person who lives at this time
at this place etc. But this is not an answer to the question indeed since
the real living other belongs to my present surrounding, even when she is
actually not here and will be out of my disposal in principle.
The only one who is neither within the picture nor outside but so to say at
the borderline of the picture itself is—the photographer, the real person
who really stood in this place at this time in Kyoto. Of course, Mr. Cheung
is still living today—thank goodness, so we can congratulate him on
ix
the 60th anniversary of his birth. But at the moment he photographed
this picture he presented a part of his existence to the presentation of
this photography. This picture has withheld also his existence—not as a
reflected one but as the absolute real point of his body, the “zero point
of all orientation” (Husserl) as a real one that says: The photographer was
here, in his own flesh. So the photo is a document, an evidence for the
fact that there was a real living person who took it. This is the evidence of
a real life that cannot be fixed by any means, it is the invisible that I am.
The author of the photo is living flesh, and his action is an expression of
his living body. While the other cannot actually be grasped because she is
always ahead, always the absolute outer, I cannot visualize myself because
I am originally, in my innermost mode of living, in my flesh, and the other
is beyond to me because he or she is also living in flesh.
That it is not possible to visualize the act of any doing, particularly of
photographing in itself, is no reason to resign. On the contrary, this fact
guarantees the access that every picture realizes, the specific perspective
that every picture is, in a word: the limitlessness of setting up limits of
borderlines by every click of the shutter of the camera, over and over again.
The transparency of the camera’s eye shuts the pure real being of the person
whose eye is looking through the camera. It also opens a worldly situation
where the other person appears—an area of an in-between where I and
the other can encounter—by pictorial means, by means of understanding.
Thus the unique, single real being in my flesh causes the constitution of a
unique situation of time and space—now, in Kyoto.
Compared with the pictorial time and space the preceding temporality and
the place where I am in my single flesh fall silent when the screen of the
picture opens. My real bodily singularity disappears, and remains as the
necessary origin of that what we can see and what we can make visible.
Itself is invisible, but not invisible as the shadowed counterpart in relation
to a visible horizon of meanings. Rather it marks the absolute ending, and
beginning, the radical outer of every being-in-a-world that is always built
of sense. In its radical absence—and ab-sense—it is still here, in this
kairos, seized by this photo of “The Photographer. In Kyoto”.
Hans Rainer Sepp is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles
University Prague.
 x xi
Interplay between the Visible and the Imaginary
Notes towards a Phenomenological Approach to Photography
What is a photographic image? Since the invention of photography in
the 19th century the technological support to produce and the media to
realize a photographic image have gone through tremendous changes. In
the digital age today, photographic images appear more and more through
an “immaterial medium”. This renders the status of a photographic image
more ambiguous, if not more enigmatic. What is the difference between a
photograph and a drawing or an etching? Is the function of a photograph
plainly journalistic and serves no more than the reproductive representation
of an external world which is a reality in itself? If so, a photograph is meant
primarily to fulfill a truth function. But what kind of truth does a photograph
carry? Is it a propositional truth of scientific nature in the form of one-one
mapping between the compositional elements of the photographic image
and the things of the world themselves that these elements are supposed
to capture and represent? Or can this truth function only be fulfilled by the
assistance of the viewer’s gaze and the viewing subject’s narrative which
is deployed not only according to what is visible and present, but also
according to what is invisible and absent from the photograph itself? If
this is the case, a photograph has a hermeneutical dimension not limited
to what is seen by the naked eye at the present moment, but carries with
itself some sort of intentional depth to be unveiled by the viewing subject.
Pursuing along this line of thought, it will not be difficult to discover
further that a photograph also carries a deconstructive dimension: The
photographic image can also be read as the interplay between moments of
presence and absence, of revelation and simulacrum, of consciousness and
the unconscious, of identity and difference within a certain pictorial space.
All these mean that photography has its own mode of temporality and
spatiality irreducible to the temporal and spatial order of physical reality.
On the other hand, photography is more and more considered as a kind of
artwork in its own right. This can be witnessed by the increasing reception
of photographic exhibitions in important artistic institutions and museums
in the West since the last decades. At the same time, the term “photographic
Kwok-ying Lau
tableau” is invented to draw attention to the parallelism between the pictorial
effect of a photograph and a painting or a drawing. In short, photography is
no longer considered as serving a merely realistic and documentary function.
But where does the artistic aspect of a photograph reside? Without doubt
this resides in its possibility to awaken pleasure, imagination and emotion:
in short, in photography’s power to affect. By awakening imagination and
emotion, a photograph has also an affective function: It can serve as a
calling, theological (calling of divinities), political (calling of justice),
moral (calling of compassion), or ecological (calling of Nature). What is the
relation between the representational, artistic and affective functions of a
photograph? Is there any tension between these functions? In any case,
the multiple functions of a photograph show that photography is neither
purely an object of contemplative life (vita contemplativa), nor that of an
active life (vita activa), to use these well-known Arendtian terminologies
to describe this state of affairs. If a photograph is an artwork capable
of being mechanically reproduced indefinitely, it has no more uniqueness.
However, given uniqueness is one of the traditional defining characteristics
of artwork, why a photograph being deprived of its uniqueness can still
be considered as an artwork? Last but not least, what is the ontological
status of a photographic image which renders it possible to carry along with
itself so many seemingly contradictory characteristics and functions? These
are some of the many questions underlying the pioneering works of Walter
Benjamin1 and Roland Barthes2 in their quest to understanding photography.
1 Walter Benjamin, “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduziertbarkeit”, first
English translation as “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, in Illuminati-
ons, ed. Hannah Arendt, Eng. trans. Harry Zohn (London: Fontana Press, 1973), pp. 211–244.
New and different versions of this classic article exist and are translated into English: “The Work
of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version”, Eng. trans. E. Jephcott
and H. Zohn, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 3, ed. Howar Eiland and Michael W.
Jennings (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 101–133;
“The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Third Version”, Eng. trans. H.
Zohn and E. Jephcott, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 4, pp. 251–283.
2 Roland Barthes, La chambre claire (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980); Camera Lucida: Reflections
on Photography, Eng. trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wong, 1981).
It is surely impossible to tackle any of the above-mentioned questions in
any depth in a short essay. These pages can only provide some hints from
the author’s own reflections out of a phenomenological approach. First of
all, if a photographic image is an artwork capable of being indefinitely
reproduced, this shows that though the appearance of a photographic
image depends on a chemical or electronic medium, it is not an object of
the real order, but an ideal unity. As shown by Husserl in the First Logical
Investigation, the ideality of any meaning formation resides precisely in its
being indefinitely repeatable.3 By virtue of its repeatability, an object of
ideality is a unity in plurality: It bears within itself the identical eidetic
structure of the object through an infinite number of empirical or actual
species. It is this character of ideality of the photographic image which
provides the ontological basis for understanding a photograph’s character
of unity in plurality. Thus in spite of its possibility of being reproduced
indefinitely by technological means, a photograph can retain its uniqueness.
Now if we consider the mode of consciousness providing access to
photographic image, we will find that it is neither an act of pure perception
nor that of pure imagination, but somewhat in between. A photographic
image never appears in the way of a perceptual physical object. A perceptual
object appears necessarily by way of adumbration, i.e., perspectival
givenness in which only certain sides of the perceived object are given
at one time while some other sides can be given only through subsequent
temporal unfolding with the help of our bodily movement. Thus the unity of
a perceptual object is always only presumptive. For the perceptual process
is a teleological process completed only in the ideally infinite unfolding of
temporality. A photographic image is never given by adumbration. Its unity
as a visible object is given entirely at one stroke, no temporal unfolding
is needed. In this respect, the mode of givenness of a photographic image
3 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, I. Teil, I. Untersuchung, §11 (Tübin-
gen: Max Niemeyer, 1980), pp. 42–45; Logical Investigations, Vol. One, Investigation I, §11,
Eng. trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 284–286.
seems close to that of an object of imagination. However, as the young
Sartre has demonstrated in his brilliant work The Imaginary, an imaginary
object can be given without any reference to a perceptual object. “The
characteristic of the intentional object of the imaging consciousness is
that the object is not there and is posited as such, or that it does not exist
and is posited as nonexistent, or that it is not posited at all.”4 Thus an
imaginary object is the result of an act of purely spontaneous production.5
In other words, it is the productive result of the subject’s act of freedom.
But the photographer can never enjoy freedom in the same manner. Not
only the photographer has to depend on technological support to produce
a photographic image, a photograph can never be realized independently
of the sensible and visible world. However, a photographic image is
never entirely reducible to what is merely visible on the surface of the
photograph. What is originated from the visible world on a photograph is
always ready to open an imaginary world. We perform an act of perception
when a photograph is placed before our eyes, but the affective effects of
the photograph guide us away from the merely visible and the imaginary
intervenes. The photographer and the photographic spectator are for sure
a being-in-the-world in each case. But the world is never reduced to what
is merely given by the visible. The horizonal structure of the world always
invites us to go beyond the merely visible. The horizon is the place where
the imaginary is called to take up the relay baton of the visible. That is why
considered from the standpoint of genetic phenomenology, the mode of
consciousness of photographic vision is the interplay between perception
and imagination, in which the visible calls into action the imaginary. It
is neither pure perception nor pure imagination: It is a hybrid mode of
consciousness.
4 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’imaginaire: psychologie phénoménologique de l’imagination (Paris: Gallimard,
1940), p. 25; The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination, Eng. trans.
Jonathan Webber (London & New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 13.
5 Sartre, L’imaginaire, p. 26; The Imaginary, p. 14.
 xii
If perception is at the origin of the epistemological attitude, imagination
is that of the aesthetic attitude. With the double or hybrid nature of the
mode of consciousness of photographic vision, we can understand why
photography can at the same time fulfill the journalistic function, which
plays essentially a realistic and documentary role, and the artistic function,
which calls into play our faculty of imagination and the aesthetic attitude
which accompanies it. In the terms of Sartre, imagination is precisely “the
great ‘irrealizing’ function (fonction ‘irréalisante’) of consciousness and its
noematic correlate, the imaginary”.6
Consistent with the teaching of Husserl on the basic epistemological
function of perception, Merleau-Ponty reminds us that each act of
natural perception is sustained by a “perceptual faith”, which is an act of
adherence to the perceptual world and the things perceived, an act “that
knows itself beyond proofs”.7 That is to say, an act of natural perception
bears with itself an unshaken belief that the world and the things of the
world which lie before its eyes exist beyond doubt, and that is why they
are also beyond proofs. Husserl calls this basic attitude underlying natural
perception the natural attitude.8 If we stick to this natural attitude when
we see things in the world, we believe that the things seen are real and
exist in themselves beyond doubt. It is this attitude that a journalistic
photograph appeals to: It aims to persuade us to believe in the natural
truth revealed by the photographic image. Theorists who emphasize the
social and political functions of photography appeal precisely to the act
6 Sartre, L’imaginaire, p. 11; The Imaginary, p. 3.
7 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 48; The Visible and the
Invisible, Eng. trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 28.
8 Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie,
I. Buch, Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1980),
§30, “Die Generalthesis der natürlicher Einstellung”, pp. 52–53; Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phe-
nomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, General Introduction to a Pure
Phenomenology, Eng. trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983), §30,
“The General Position which Characterizes the Natural Attitude”, pp. 56–57.
of adherence to the truth of the perceptual faith underlying the natural
attitude.
However, when we suspend our belief towards the truth value of the
photographic image, when we turn our attention to the balance between
luminosity and shade, the spatial configuration, the pattern of graphic
elements, the effect of contrast or harmony between the colours, the
impression of stillness or movement, the interplay between foreground and
background, and the mode of pictorial composition, etc. which appear on
the photograph, we have performed an epochē with regard to the natural
attitude. By disregarding whether the photographic image corresponds
to something really existing in the world, we change our attitude into
an aesthetic attitude. In Husserl’s terms, this is an act of “imaginative
modification (imaginative Modifikation)” in which “judgements are passed
in a certain manner, but they lack the character of genuine judgements: we
neither believe, deny or doubt what is told us—mere ‘imaginings’ replace
genuine judgements. Such talk must not be taken to mean that imagined
judgements here take the place of actual ones. We rather enact, instead of
a judgement affirming a state of affairs, the qualitative modification, the
neutral putting in suspense of the same state of affairs, which cannot be
identified with any fictional representation (Phantasieren) of it”.9 This is the
attitude underlying an aesthetic judgement, i.e., a contemplative attitude
which is unaffected by the epistemological interest but lends oneself to
be affected by the sense of pleasure generated by this “irrealizing” view.
Viewed under such an aesthetic attitude, the photograph now reveals
itself as an artwork.
When the photographic vision pays more attention to the pictorial
elements of the photograph, its spatial dimensions are privileged.
9 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, I. Teil, p. 490; Logical Investigations,
Vol. One, pp. 645–646.
xiii
However, when the invisible, the absence or the unconscious are awaken the gloomy background and the luminosity of the faces of the mother-
in the narrative of the viewing subject, the imaginary intervenes actively. son pair, symbolizing the unfailing force of hope overcoming a past of
It is then possible to speak of the poetics of photography: The imaginary darkness through the unconditional love exemplified by infinite maternal
is activated in a narrative which unfolds itself in a temporality of its own care. For my own part, this photograph testifies to the highest degree
right. That is why when Roland Barthes employs the binary concepts of to the critical-political function and the artistic-poetic dimension of
studium and punctum to build up his quasi-phenomenological theory of photography.
photography, such a theory is limited to the stage of static constitution.
When Barthes stresses that the temporality of a photograph is limited Before closing this very brief attempt at a phenomenological elucidation
to the past, it seems that he is unaware of the dimension of genetic of photography, I must express my admiration and gratitude towards
constitution in phenomenological research. It is genetic constitution Chan-fai Cheung, the author of the present album who is at the same
which, if not completes, at least supplements static constitution. time an accomplished photographer and a phenomenological philosopher.
Being one of my best friends, closest colleagues and phenomenological
Let me illustrate my propos by an example of my own experience of comrades, Chan-fai guided me through his numerous personal photographic
photographic vision. I saw an exhibition of journalistic photographs in exhibitions to the way to discover the artistic-poetic dimension of
the mid-1980s in the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris. Nearly a quarter photography. This short essay is dedicated to him at the occasion of his
of a century after visiting this exhibition, only one photograph among 60th birthday.
probably a hundred or more shown during this occasion remains in my
mind now. However, each time when I recall it, it is as vivid as if I
just saw it yesterday. I recall neither the name of the photographer, who
is Japanese, nor the title of the photograph. On this black and white
photograph is a Japanese woman, in her 40s or 50s, face to face with her
handicapped son who has the head and the trunk of a young adult but
the limbs of an infant. They are bathing in the same basin of oval shape
situated in a dark and spacious background. According to the caption
provided, the young man is born deformed as the result of his mother’s
exposure to radiation released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
on 6 August 1945. The face of the son is more or less without expression.
However, the mother’s face is full of tenderness. This photograph strikes
me by the sharp contrast between the barbarism of the atomic bombing
and the humanity of an aging mother’s love for her invalid son, between
the particularity of this historic event and the universality of maternal Kwok-ying Lau is Professor at the Department of Philosophy, The Chinese
love, as well as the poetic effect brought about by the contrast between University of Hong Kong.