Once photography seemed magical because it could passively inscribe reality and reproduce it; now we demand a different magic from it, it must do something else to still seem powerful. Photos cease to be documents and become prayers. ... The eclipse photo is a picture of being afraid of the dark.
Images of unphotographability Rob Horning 4.12.2024
Magritte's aim was not to create fantasy for its own sake but to provoke thought by revealing the strangeness all around us. To him, fantasy was about making the familiar unfamiliar so that we could see reality anew. Always with a subtle sense of humor, like summer, decadent, witty, curious, and strange.
the delirium of having spent all day in an aesthetic frame of mind— watching a beautiful movie, taking photos across the city, getting lost in an art museum—which infuses the world with an aura of meaning, until every crack in the wall becomes a commitment to naturalism, and every rainbow swirling in a puddle feels like a choice.