EMBODIMENT

Is this truly an experience? I ask: does it really express an experience? … [Wittgenstein]

PHOTOGRAPHY

To photograph is to appropriate what is photographed—to place it within a relation to the world. … [Sontag]

TIMELESSNESS

Ordinary language requires verbs to be inflected for tense, even where time—as in mathematics—is irrelevant. … [Quine]

AWATAR

A vessel for our projections of the self.

REALITY

The visible is no longer reality; the invisible is no longer a dream. … [William Butler Yeats]

BODY

Human bodies think, feel, decide, and move mountains in carrying out their intentions. … [Quine]

IDENTITY

Am I the one online, or merely a copy of a part of myself? Objects are identical only to themselves. … [Hume]

DATA

The body has become a field of extractive mechanisms. … [Zuboff]

SELFHOOD

Who do we become when we can be anyone?

CYBORG

Once enhanced and pacified, the body has become a site of operation for both technology and remote agents. … [Stelarc]

Images stand between the human and the world. Conceived as maps of reality, they have become screens, with the human reduced to their function. Rather than representing the world, they obscure it. Reality turns into a mere backdrop for scenes and states of affairs. We forget that it is we who create images that magically transform the world. They appear objective, and so we trust them as we trust our own eyes. It is an illusion to believe that the photographic apparatus merely copies or archives reality.

“Beyond Flesh / Beyond Flash” is a play on words referring to a digital world in which physical presence is no longer necessary to create a visual counterpart. With AI-powered generative tools, we can construct our own image without the need for photography. Does this signal the end of traditional photography, or rather its evolution?

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