The Ontology of the Image
Photography is often thought of as preservation: faces, places, moments held against the passing of time. The image as document, guiding us back to what once was. This role is important, yet photography holds another dimension. It does not only show—it brings forth. It does not give us a copy of the world; it creates a world.
Photography is not an object but an event. It arises from the encounter of light and time, and it becomes complete only in the presence of the viewer. An image does more than record reality: it establishes a new mode of being, in which reality takes on another form. When a photograph is created in situ, the place itself becomes an active participant. The silence of a forest, the pulse of a city, the shimmer of water all enter the image as living forces. The photographer is not a detached observer but moves with full openness of the senses, allowing the work to carry the very presence of the place.
In photography, time is not a vanishing backdrop but an active substance. This becomes most palpable in multi-exposure. And here one clarification is crucial: this does not mean digital layering in post-production, but in situ creation within the camera itself. Light enters the same field again and again, each return inscribing a new temporal layer. The photograph is not a digital construction but a condensation of time itself. Multi-exposure in this sense is an ontological act: time does not recede but builds; it does not disappear but weaves a fabric. The image thus carries not a single moment but the visible body of layered time.
Throughout the history of photography, many artists have moved instinctively in this direction. The photograms of Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray allowed light to inscribe itself directly, not representing but revealing presence. Alfred Stieglitz, in his “Equivalents,” sought pure vibration beyond objects. Minor White lived photography as a spiritual event, drawing the viewer into inner transformation. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s seascapes and cinema screens expanded the experience of time, while Michael Wesely’s year-long exposures condensed its flow into a single image. Uta Barth made the very act of seeing into presence, showing not what is seen but how seeing happens. Wolfgang Tillmans, through cameraless experiments, brought forth light itself as resonance. Each, in their own way, pointed toward the ontology of photography: not representation, but emergence.
The photograph never closes in on itself. It is an open process, completed by the gaze of the viewer. Every act of looking recreates it, so that photography becomes not record but living event, its very existence dependent on presence. Painting builds, sculpture shapes, music unfolds in time. Photography uniquely carries both light and time as its immediate substance. The camera is not a neutral tool but an open threshold through which the resonances of the world come into being.
In the end, photography is a shared space: the meeting of creator, place, time, and viewer. No single presence dominates; each is woven into the fabric of the work. Photography is thus not memory but vibration: a living presence where the world discloses itself anew. This thought shines through the works of many artists, yet in every image it is reborn differently. The essence of photography lies in this irreducible event: a world that did not exist before, and will not exist after—only here and now, in light and in vision.
