FOR ILLUSION ISN'T THE OPPOSITE OF REALITY...

The world in itself resembles nothing. As concept and discourse it relates to many other things - as pure object, it is unidentifiable.

The photographic operation is a kind of reflex or automatic writing of the self-evidence of the world, which is not self-evident at all.

In the generic illusion of the image, the problem of the real no longer arises. It is effaced by its very movement, which passes immediately and spontaneously beyond true and false, beyond real and unreal, beyond good and evil.

The image is not a medium for which we have to find the proper use. It is what it is and it is beyond all our moral considerations. It is by its essence immoral, and the world's becoming-image is an immoral process. It is up to us to escape our representation and to become ourselves the immoral vehicle of the image. Up to us to become objects again, and to become once again other in a seductive relation to the world.

To make way for the silent complicity between object and objective lens, between appearances and technology, between the physical quality of light and the metaphysical complexity of the technical apparatus, without bringing in either vision or meaning. For it is the object which sees us, the object which dreams us. It is the world which reflects us, it is the world which thinks us. This is the basic rule.

The magic of photography is that it is the object which does all the work. Photographers will never admit this and will argue that all the originality lies in their inspiration and their photographic interpretation of the world. As a result they take photographs which are either bad or too good, confusing their subjective vision with the reflex miracle of the photographic act.

Jean Baudrillard