The Concept of Non-Photography: April 7

The Concept of Non-Photography

Lecture by François Laruelle, Introduction by Robin Mackay

Thursday, April 7th, 7pm

Miguel Abreu Gallery, 36 Orchard Street (between Canal & Hester)

Of what do these essays speak? Of photography in the flesh – but not the flesh of the photographer. Myriads of negatives tell of the world, speaking in clichés among themselves, constituting a vast conversation, filling a photosphere that is located nowhere. But one single photo is enough to express a real that all photographers aspire one day to capture, without ever quite succeeding in doing so. Even so, this real lingers on the negatives’ surface, at once lived and imperceptible. Photographs are the thousand flat facets of an ungraspable identity that only shines – and at times faintly – through something else. What more is there to a photo than a curious and prurient glance? And yet it is also a fascinating secret.

—From Preface, The Concept of Non-Photography

François Laruelle, Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris West Nanterre La Défence, is the founder of ‘non-philosophy’ and the author of around twenty works, including Une biographie de l’homme ordinaire, Principes de la non-philosophie, Le Christ futur: Une leçon d’hérésie, and Philosophie non-standard. An introductory collection of his essays, From Decision to Heresy: Introduction to Non-Philosophy, will be published by Urbanomic/Sequence in 2011.

http://www.miguelabreugallery.com/pdf/UrbanomicSequence_PrRlse_Apr2011.pdf