It requires relatively little mental strain to imagine a world in which all that can be photographed has been; it requires, I think, considerably more to imagine one in which every possible photograph has been made. I find that both of these little thought experiments imply comic narratives—that is, to borrow a definition, ones which resolve in favour of their protagonists. And who might these protagonists be?
In the former, I suppose the answer is obvious enough: us. I mean for this first-person plural to be understood in an adequately capacious manner that it might account for not just the human subjectivity which has to date presided over the domain of picturing—someone goes on pressing the button, moving the brush, smearing the pigmented fat on the cave wall—but also for any and all of those potentially autonomous technologies that, having learned from our ways, might join in the effort of realizing some deranged Sanderian dream. If I say that this resolves in our favour, it is as beings of language: everything would have its perfect name. That this implies a situation in which there is complete agreement as to the rightness of each image comprising this taxonomic system leads our utopian comedy just as easily into playing as one of democracy or totalitarianism; in either case, the humour of the ceaseless effort required to sustain its ongoing relevance and refinement is worthy, at least, of Chaplin.
There is what appears to be an equally obvious hero of the second narrative—let’s call it the visible world—but this is complicated by the history of the art, which abounds in countless attempts at photographing what, strictly speaking, can’t be seen. In this light, it seems that our hero is being itself. Rather than a tale of industry, here we find something closer to romance: the medium, desperate to prove its fidelity, sets out on a markedly more deranged quest to picture everything that can be, from every angle. The result is a kind of screwball comedy—the pursued, of course, is the real star—in which the hapless lover attempts, through sheer idiot energy, to make itself into something worthy of being loved in return, into nothing more nor less than the equal of infinity. The shape of the narrative is horribly complicated, and its resolution hopelessly unclear. Still, perfect and wanting for nothing, our protagonist will triumph regardless, whether alone or in the astonishment of
