Abstract

Angelo Schwarz re-traces the context in which Flusser operated in Italy with a detailed historical perspective, which he weaves together with the memory of his personal relationship with Flusser. In this text Schwarz is asked to answer a question that he first posed in 1985 at the workshop Torino Fotografia 85, “What legitimates photography?” With the methodology of the historian, he re formulates the question in “what is photography,” and with careful attention to details, people, and dates, he goes back to the pre origins of photography, bringing the reader to the very act and materiality of the process. Whereas Flusser does not speak of concrete images in his writing, Schwarz insists in finding the answer to his question in the ontology of the photographic image in the “truth” of the technical process.