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Craig Owens Quotes

Photographs are but one link in a potentially endless chain of reduplication; themselves duplicates (of both their objects and, in a sense, their negatives), they are also subject to further duplication, either through

Photographs are but one link in a potentially endless chain of reduplication; themselves duplicates (of both their objects and, in a sense, their negatives), they are also subject to further duplication, either through the procedures of printing or as objects of still other photographs.

Craig Owens
Links, Photograph, Printing
Craig Owens, Scott Stewart Bryson (1994). “Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture”, p.26, Univ of California Press

Representation, then, is not - nor can it be - neutral; it is an act - indeed the founding act - of power in our culture.

Craig Owens
Culture, Founding, Representation
Craig Owens, Scott Stewart Bryson (1994). “Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture”, p.91, Univ of California Press

As an allegorical art, then, photography would represent our desire to fix the transitory, the ephemeral, in a stable and stabilizing image.

Craig Owens
Photography, Art, Desire
Craig Owens, Scott Stewart Bryson (1994). “Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture”, p.56, Univ of California Press

The postmodernist critique of representation undermines the referential status of visual imagery, its claim to represent reality as it really is - either the appearance of things or some ideal order behind or beyond appearance.

Craig Owens
Reality, Order, Appearance

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