Greetings from Dutch Country
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perceived as more truthful than a drawing. Even today, there can be little doubt
that one of the camera’s main functions is simply to record reality. Consider, for
instance, how the photograph functions, even now, as legal and scientific
evidence.
At first, the photograph’s inherent capacity to represent may appear to be
obvious, but the philosophical basis requires some background. As the French
semiotician Roland Barthes has theorized, a photograph presents something that
has “posed in front of the tiny hole and remained there forever. . . ”2‘r The
relative permanence of the image offers a visual record—a “proof’ that the
particular person, place, or thing captured on the film actually existed during the
brief moment o