Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography - Monoskop

can continue to speak of "likeness" without ever having
seen the model. As in the case of most of Nadar's portraits
(or of Avedon's, today): Guizot is "like" because he conforms
to his myth of austerity; Dumas, swollen, beaming,
because I already know his self-importance and his
fecundity; Offenbach, because I know that his music has
something (reputedly) witty about it; Rossini looks false,
even crooked (the semblance that resembles) ; Marceline
Desbordes-Valmore reproduces in her face the slightly
stupid virtues of her verses; Kropotkin has the bright eyes
of anarchizing idealism, etc. I see them all, I can spontaneously
call them "likenesses" because they conform to
what I expect of them. A proof a contrario: finding myself
an uncertain, amythic subject, how could I find myself
"like"? All I look like is other photographs of myself, and
this to infinity: no one is ever anything but the copy of a
copy, real or mental (at most, I can say that in certain
photographs I endure myself, or not, depending on
whether or not I find myself in accord with the image of
myself I want to give). For all its banal appearance (the
first thing one says about a portrait), this imaginary analogy
is full of extravagance: X shows me the photograph
of one of his friends whom he has talked about, whom I
have never seen; and yet, I tell myself (I don't know
why), "''m sure Sylvain doesn't look like that." Ultimately
a photograph looks like anyone except the person
it represents. For resemblance refers to the subject's
identity, an absurd, purely legal, even penal affair; likeness
gives out identity "as itself," whereas I want a subject
-in Mallarme's terms-"as into itself eternity transforms