Photography and Fetish

Abstract

First difference: the spatio-temporal size of the lexis, according to that term's definition as proposed by the Danish semiotician Louis Hjelmslev. The lexis is the socialized unit of reading, of reception: in sculpture, the statue; in music, the piece. Obviously the photographic lexis, silent rectangle of paper, is much smaller than the cinematic lexis. Even when the film is only two minutes long, these two minutes are enlarged, so to speak, by sounds, movements, and so forth, to say nothing of the average surface of the screen and of the very fact of projection. In addition, the photographic lexis has no fixed duration ( = temporal size): it depends, rather, on the spectator, who is the master of the look, whereas the timing of the cinematic lexis is determined in advance by the filmmaker. Thus on the one side, a free rewriting time; on the other, an imposed reading time, as Peter Wollen has pointed out.1 Thanks to these two features (smallness, possibility of lingering look), photography is better fit, or more likely, to work as fetish. Another important difference pertains to the social use, or more exactly (as film and photography both have many uses) to their principal legitimated use. Film is considered as collective entertainment or as art, according to the work and to the social group. This is probably due to the fact that its production is less accessible to ordinary people than that of photography. Equally, it is in most cases fictional, and our culture still has strong tendency to confound art with fiction. Photography enjoys high degree of social recognition in another