Photography’s photography. Interpretation of photographs which discuss themselves

Abstract

In the presented article, the critical analysis of Thomas Struth’s photography - included in the first part - is becoming an excuse for the sociological interpretation of specific way of photographing. Photography in the social world, uses and affordances, relations and deformations, according to which the reality is being introduced, becomes the subject of considered photos. But, from the point of view of visual sociology, this topic’s change seems to not be considerably interesting until the point when it will be considered on the field of the temporary status of the pictures themselves, thus interpret them on the background set of changes in their function and manners in which we are using them and theorizing about them. Those kind of reflection are the subject of the second part of the text. I’m looking there at the photography in theory, an album, gallery, advertisement and critic, analyzing the outcomes of such practices in optics – elaborated during presented considerations – categories of the “photography’s photography”; a category which I propose to be treated not only as a litmus for the contemporary visual order, but also as a stabilizer of this order.