The wholeness, coherence, identity, which we attribute to the depicted scene [in a photograph] is a projection, a refusal of an impoverished reality in favour of an imagined plenitude.
Victor BurginEven the uncaptioned art photograph is invaded by language in the very moment it is looked at: in memory, in association, snatches of words and images continually intermingle and exchange one for the other.
Victor BurginOur conviction that we are free to choose what we make of a photograph hides the complicity to which we are recruited in the very act of looking.
Victor BurginThe only pertinent political question in relation to an identity [or its photograph] is not Is it really coherent? but What does it actually achieve?
Victor Burgin