Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the philosophical problems posed by seeing the photographic image as an eternal conflict between objectivity and subjectivity. Drawing on Searle's analytic philosophy, it argues that reality can neither be rejected nor proved; the relationship between the photographic image and reality cannot be verified or falsified by an ontological theory, since realism is part of the background presuppositions that precede our theorising about the relationship between image and world. The article concludes that the «reality» of photographic images functions as the condition of possibility of our photographic practices and that the «reality» of photography is never purely subjective or purely objective.