The Searing of the University

Abstract

No matter how artful the photographer, no matter how carefully posed his subject, the beholder [of the photograph] feels an irresistible urge to search such a picture for the tiny spark of contingency, of the here and now, with which reality has (so to speak) seared the subject, to find the inconspicuous spot where in the immediacy of that long-forgotten moment the future nests so eloquently that we, looking back, may rediscover it.2