A realidade em exercício: a fotografia, da fenomenologia a Walter Benjamin

What is photography? Where does its evidential force come from? What unprecedented form of representation was created by photographic technique? Why are photographs paradoxical objects? And how do they raise questions of similarity? Are they mere copies of reality or, more profoundly, do they play with mimetic forces and gestures? What is an exercise? Why do we repeatedly return to Walter Benjamin to think about photography? These and other questions have given impetus to this book, which seeks to deepen the relationship between philosophical thought and photography by embarking on an exploratory journey through a field that, although encompassed by aesthetics, does not immediately fit into the traditional compartments of philosophy.

The presentation of thought is inseparable from the mode of presentation, and a study is not only the act of traversing a path, but also the space traversed itself. In this case, there is no single direction; it is not just a matter of thinking about photography using philosophical instruments, concepts and authors. It is also about doing – or attempting to do, since the task is not easy – the opposite: using what photography, as a technique for producing photographs, inscribes in thought, which demands a reformulation or production of concepts. This implies a space of reciprocity and contamination between philosophy and photography, whereby the in-between of the journey should be seen not as a weakness, but as a virtue and fertile ground.