The Concept of Non-Photography

The Concept of Non-Photography

François Laruelle

Urbanomic/Sequence
April 2011; Second edition 2012
Bilingual (English/French) edition
English Translation by Robin Mackay
Paperback 115x175mm, 286pp.
ISBN 978-0-9832169-1-9

If philosophy has always understood itself and its World according to the model of the photograph, then how can there be a "philosophy of photography" that is not viciously self-reflexive? By thinking the photograph "non-philosophically", Laruelle discovers an essence of photography that precedes its historical, technological and aesthetic conditions. Challenging the customary assumptions made by any "theory of photography" that leaves its own "onto-photo-logical" conditions uninterrogated, and utilizing the concept of a "generalized fractality" to interrogate artistic creation, The Concept of Non-Photography exposes a rigorous new thinking of the photograph in its relation to philosophy, science and art.

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.

Contents
Preface

What is Seen in a Photo?
  The Philosopher as Self-Portrait of the Photographer; Towards an Abstract or Non-Figurative Theory of
  Photography; The Photographic Stance and Vision-force; Universal Photographic Fiction

A Science of Photography
  The Continent of Flat Thoughts; A Science of Photography; What Can a Photo Do?; The Identity-Photo;
  The Spontaneous Philosophy of Photography; The Photographic Mode of Existence; The Being-Photo
  of the Photo; Photographic Realism; Problems of Method: Art and Art Theory. Invention and Discovery;
  On the Photo as Visual Algorithm; On Photography as Generalised Fractality; On the Spontaneous
  Philosophy of Artists and its Theoretical Use; The Photographic Stance and its Technological Conditions
  of Insertion into the World; Being-in-photo and the Automaticity of Thought: the Essence of Photographic
  Manifestation; The Power-of-Semblance and the Effect of Resemblance; A Priori Photographic Intuition

A Philosophy of Creation
  The Grain of the Walls; Ethic of the American Creator as Fractal Artist; The Fractal Self and its Signature:
  A New Alchemical Synthesis;The Concept of 'Irregularity-force'; The Fractal Play of the World. Synthesis
  of Modern and Postmodern; Towards a Non-Philosophical Aesthetics

 

 

The Concept of Non-Photography review
Catherine Kron for DIS Magazine
July 10, 2011

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François Laruelle review
The Times Literary Supplement
April 1, 2011

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François Laruelle, The Concept of Non-Photography
Book launch, symposium and lecture
Tuesday, April 5 – Thursday, April 7, 2011
Miguel Abreu Gallery
36 Orchard Street, New York, NY    

PRESS RELEASE

 
Axiomatic heresy
By Ray Brassier

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François Laruelle, or The Secret
Lecture by Alexander Galloway
Public School NYC, October 2010

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