Photography and the Optical Unconscious
Shawn Michelle Smith is Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the author of
Sharon Sliwinski is Associate Professor of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario and author of
Shawn Michelle Smith is Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the author of
Sharon Sliwinski is Associate Professor of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario and author of
French philosopher Sarah Kofman examines the role that photography played in Sigmund Freud’s theoretical elaboration of the human psyche. In this excerpt from her book Camera Obscura: Of Ideology, first published in French in 1973, Kofman tracks the ways Freud explicitly and repeatedly used the metaphor of photography—and the photographic negative, in particular—in order to illustrate his theory of the unconscious. Far from simply producing a transparent image of reality, Kofman shows how Freud used photography to help illustrate the way human perception is structured to suit the demands of the ego.
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