Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Short Fiction

photographs? Is a photograph of a photograph a photograph squared, or an antiphotograph? Maybe back in 1970, when he wrote this story, Calvino was reflecting on the work of a few contemporary artists, but the practice of photographing photographs certainly wasn’t a recent invention. In the eighteenth century, and even into the early nineteenth century, photographs traveled from one country and continent to the other, in the mail or in immigrants’ suitcases, while the negatives—glass plates or film—usually stayed behind in the photographer’s studio, or got lost along the way. So, oftentimes, the only way to duplicate a photo was to rephotograph the hardcopy. As French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy once wrote, an image “is a thing that isn’t the thing: its essence is to distinguish itself from its source.” An image, then, is distinct, separate, and maybe that’s why we so easily believe illusion-based tricks that play with our perception, bridging the gap between what’s present and absent. I’m looking at a family photo of a man and seven children—three girls, four boys. It’s 1916. One of the younger children, standing to the right of the father, and the father himself, seated on a chair in front of a house in the countryside, holds a framed portrait of the

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