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<p>"Pierre" and "connect" were two different thoughts.</p>

<p>I used Pierre to illustrate that the subject does not have to be central, or as you put it, the center being the subject. [Example: sometimes you get the best likeness of a character in a play when he's off to the side doing something totally tangential to the main action. Good actors are amazing to watch when they're not the focus of attention, when they are a mere afterthought on the stage.]</p>

<p>Connect (or "get it") was your next condition for proper-name likeness. That's where I brought in Arbus: to rebut the notion that connection is necessary (either way, from photographer to subject or subject to photographer).</p>

<p>Now, moving on to "getting it," which is a little different. But, still, I think I've achieved photographic likenesses of things and people I didn't get (or didn't yet get). That's where accident, surprise, serendipity come in. It's also the case that when I pay visual attention to something, I can achieve a likeness of it when it's still a mystery to me, something I really don't get. As a matter of fact, I think it's part of the human condition (oh my God!) to be at least a little bit ungettable. I think showing a little ungettableness is often the key to a good portrait. Ambiguity, questioning, the part I don't know. As a photographer and as a viewer, I respond to what I don't get because it's so real and it suggests possibility rather than completeness.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>I got a kick out of Fred's announcement that "likeness is not replication," followed by Julie's instant agreement. In other words, certain ideas and understandings can be explored here (even if they can't be expressed with clarity), and others cannot. (fwiw, I think many (or most) photographers attempt to replicate what they see, though I personally don't).</p>

<p>Evidently, to be worthy of discussion here, ideas must be expressed with prolixity and foreign authority.</p>

<p>The obligatory references to Barthes, accompanied by proofs and admissions that he's not been read, are charming :-)</p>

<p>Barthes is an invisible Pope, kept alive for obvious reasons: "Don't let the proles look to closely without His authority, the photograph may tell an unauthorized tale!" Many thought Gutenberg and non-Latin had displaced the papacy and elevated the individual...similar to the way many thought photographs supplanted authoritarian and badly written deceptions. But no.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p><strong>Julie - "</strong>Luis, I have no problem with fictional likeness; all pictures are fictional a few generations after were made. It's a genesis thing; if I am getting something that is not anything else (good lord, look what you have driven me to writing!); a likeness is not a gear in the machinery of the picture but is an autonomous machine unto itself."</p>

<p>In a fictional likeness, what is the referent? Particularly if it is not from a clear-cut story, cultural icon, or myth? It's a <em>conceptual </em>referent? Archetype? Type? I'm not so sure it's a Genesis thing, though it might be. It is still like something else. Something that resonates with the viewer. No, <em>within</em> the viewer. Autonomous? Tantalizing... Ewwww....we're bowling on thin ice there...:-)</p>

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<p>Luis/Julie, fiction's fun . . . and there's truth in it. Would the people familiar with the subject of a portrait know (or care) whether they were seeing (part) fiction? And would the fiction, when recognized as such, actually reinforce the likeness of the subject of the portrait? Without knowing Jeremy, I'd be pretty sure that there were at least some fictions (exaggerations, extraneous materials) swirling about him in this photo. But those fictions may be the very NOT that makes his likeness more apparent, or seem more apparent. Knowing Jeremy, those fictions become like an AHA! moment. ("You've cast him perfectly!") Not knowing Jeremy, they still have their effect, though maybe the effect is one more of "resonance" (Luis's word) than "recognition." (Though Julie, I think, appreciated the photo, I'm not sure it resonated with her as a likeness, which is fine.)</p>

<p>Luis brought up the potential of type. That's something I play with, especially in my work with middle-aged gay men. Clearly, I can identify these men by type. And there is a likeness there in that type that I am exploring and my subjects are exploring with me. At the same time, these men are individuals and I dance back and forth between their individuality and their typeness.</p>

<p>Luis's "resonates" (good word) seems to have a relationship to "likeness" but doesn't necessarily suggest accuracy. Fiction <em>resonates</em>. Accuracy seems more an attempt to <em>define</em>.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>We speak of likeness in regard to a specific photograph or image, and our memories or personal perceptions of that subject.</p>

<p>I believe that Likeness is also important (if not more so) in regard to the relation of the subject to other matter, animate or inanimate. We may present the rough skin of a mariner and think of the rocky shoreline of his Newfoundland coast or the wind shaped ice formed on the river. That is another type of likeness that is an important stimulus in my photography, and probably that of many of my peers.</p>

<p>Difference is so easy to notice. It distinguishes your image of « a day at the beach » or an image depicting « hope », from mine. Even in considering the likeness of some singular subject (e.g. portrait figure) we are often focussing on differences (unlikeness), in order to distinguish the subject from another (how is Serge different from others of his community?).</p>

<p>What if we focused more on likeness to other familiar elements of our material world? Two trees in an image might on closer examination be a tree set beside a human lung stretched out to its full capacity (or a human neuron network set beside a leafless tree). Or the human lung may strongly suggest a tree that happens to exist only as an out of frame element. One observer likened one of my images of weathered former live trees to Holocaust victims liberated from a camp. Not exactly how I envisaged them, but a strong likeness to him.</p>

<p>Dutch philosopher Spinoza deduced that nature is but one substance with an infinite variety of manifestations: "Matter is everywhere the same, differing only in appearance". Ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu many centuries earlier than the 17th sensed that "Each separate thing in the universe returns to the common source."</p>

<p>I am inspired as much by seeking likenesses between diifferent subjects as in recognizing some intrinsic likeness of some character or scene. One involves an out of frame reference to other (Spinozian) matter, the other an out of frame reference to a personal perception of likeness possessed in/by the subject.</p>

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<p>Luis said, "In a fictional likeness, what is the referent?" THAT IS MY QUESTION ... please stop torturing me by bringing it back to the top every time I feel that I've successfully smothered it in hand-waving. But since you did, you are now to be held responsible for ANSWERING IT. Thank you. I'll be waiting. (And eat that"autonomous." It's has vitamins and minerals; children in Antarctica are starving for lack of "autonomous" so you should eat more and make sure they stay that way.)</p>

<p>One more time, with feeling. Why are eyewitness accounts so fallible? Top-down, forced likenessing out of pieces? (I have close friends whose eye-color and, to some degree, hair-color I would have difficulty reporting.) Autonomous = the whole, not the pieces; not a patchwork; it is what it is even without particular knowledge of the parts. Why is <a href="http://www.allartclassic.com/pictures_zoom.php?p_number=63&p=&number=HOH002">the Holbein portrait</a> a likeness to me, instantly?</p>

<p>Olivier as Othello. Actually, it is precisely because there is no "as" that this is such an amazing likeness. I sit down to watch the movie, very skeptical of how Olivier is going to do this. His first scene; I'm thinking about all the descriptors of Othello (Moor, hired man, military, etc.) and weighing that while hearing Shakespeare's words coming out of this patchworked Olivier, Moor, hired man, thing when suddenly (very soon; minutes into the movie) BANG ... Olivier disappears. Shakespeare disappears. Othello is all there is. Unlike all other productions of <em>Othello</em> that I've seen, this creature is not some noble, tragic figurehead spouting Shakespearian cleverness. He's a little bit weasely, a little bit vain, more than a little bit ridiculous as newly, totally in love and not familiar with that condition, ... and beyond or with all that, totally decent.</p>

<p>The words that he speaks serve this Othello, this creature who appears, fully made. The words come from him and he (what he is) makes their meaning. In other versions of the play that I've seen, the actor served the words. In this same production, Maggie Smith plays Desdemona. In my opinion, this was a big mistake. She remains, always, throughout the performance, Maggie Smith speaking Shakespeare's words.</p>

<p>Now, Luis, dear, you need to explain to me how or where that Othello man came from. He is there, complete, autonomous, and talking to me. (He vaporized Olivier and Shakespeare, so he's sure to show up on a poster in your local post office shortly. With a reward.)</p>

<p>[Note to both Fred and Arthur. In my opinion, type is what likeness is not. However, I hope that my opinion will not prevent you from developing your opinions (heh! as if I could ...) -- which I love to read and from which I will learn new things.]</p>

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<p><em>"Now, Luis, dear, you need to explain to me how or where that Othello man came from."</em></p>

<p>I don't want to speak for Luis, but it might be a simple matter of talent. Olivier had it. Not everything can be explained. Seriously. Are you demanding (figuratively, I know) explanations where a simple combination of hard work and innate talent is the answer? Again, I say you're looking for a formula which will not come. There are few of these Olivier-Othello-like performances for a reason.</p>

<p>One thing my director friend tells his actors again and again is to stop trying so hard. "Don't look <em>like</em> you're acting."</p>

<p>BTW, when you say type is what likeness is not, I become skeptical of that concept of likeness. It starts to sound like "essence" about which there is a purity . . . and falseness. If I understand anything about this likeness, it would have to have some type in it and they couldn't be separable. It would be like looking for Fred, the part of Fred that was not "man." Huh?</p>

<p>Could "likeness" be elevating our sights too high? Could it be much lower in our field of vision than the places we're looking?</p>

<p>Two quotes from Olivier that might be food for thought:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman."</p>

<p>"Lead the audience by the nose to the thought."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's where that Othello man came from.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>[Yummy, a rich breakfast of autonomy, buttered toast and eggs this morning...so healthy, too. As per Julie's suggestion, I gleefully downed a little extra for the Antarctic urchin-wraiths.]</p>

 

 

<p><strong>Julie - "</strong>Luis said, "In a fictional likeness, what is the referent?" THAT IS MY QUESTION ..."<br>

and....<br>

"...you are now to be held responsible for ANSWERING IT. Thank you. I'll be waiting."</p>

<p>Awww.... do I have to? Sweet torture is such fun! And any answer I give is going to be woefully incomplete, as it must be...(stock up on benadryl, though the torturous itch can be quite motivating).</p>

<p>The answer is that it is not a simple binary likeness, but something else entirely. In itself, it encodes itself, <em>and </em>the raw materials for its Other, which is not a true or real referent, but in our minds, that's not a big deal. It just has to be a <em>believable </em>referent, because once we believe it, we see it. Because we construct it in our minds, it's tailor-made, fashioned from the hometown mud, and thus, very believable.<br>

<strong>Julie - "</strong>One more time, with feeling. Why are eyewitness accounts so fallible?"</p>

<p>Short tentative answer: Because our awareness has huge gaping holes that we are not aware of. Ask any magician or select photographers.</p>

<p><strong>Julie - "</strong>Why is <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.allartclassic.com/pictures_zoom.php?p_number=63&p=&number=HOH002" target="_blank">the Holbein portrait</a> a likeness to me, instantly?"</p>

<p>Perhaps because it is so direct, <em> </em>engaging, period-correct, rich in costume, Lordly accessories, pose, etc all of which add up to a convincing gestalt? I love the hand near the short sword.<br>

Olivier as Othello works because Olivier is expertly encoding a<em> role </em>with every fiber in his body. He triggers the right images in the viewer's brain, and activates the mirror neurons with every word and movement of his body. He is handing the viewer's imagination partly his version and, more important, leaves enough ambiguity open and unfinished business so that the viewer interacts, completes it, and makes it her own Othello. Obviously, this is not easy to do. I agree with Fred that it takes a lot of work, and probably no small amount of talent to pull it off. <em>It's an amazing likeness because you created it. </em>And all this is a guess, a clutching at things just out of reach, like streamers in the wind at Carnival, because Fred is right in that everything cannot be explained<em>. </em>My meager explanations should<em> not be read </em>as authoritative pat answers, but simply what comes to mind.<em><br /></em></p>

<p><strong>Julie - "</strong> BANG ... Olivier disappears. Shakespeare disappears. Othello is all there is."</p>

<p>And this is by design. Simultaneously, Othello appears, then disappears, and afterwards the footprints of Shakespeare are suddenly visible. There are lessons there for any creative. That Othello came from your own mind. For a multitude of reasons, you are active, not passive, and the play/movie is not an alien thing entering your consciousness, but it is being reprocessed and has become yours.</p>

 

 

<p ><a name="00Y78E"></a></p>

 

<p><em> </em>_______________________________</p>

<p><strong>Fred - "</strong>BTW, when you say type is what likeness is not, I become skeptical of that concept of likeness. It starts to sound like "essence" about which there is a purity . . . and falseness."</p>

<p>I had thought the same thing, particularly when looking at how minimal caricatures, and wondering how it is that with only a few bits of line, and no detail or verisimilitude to speak of, it is easy to recognize who the referent is. It gets dangerously close to 'essence', but to me it is saying that we don't need a whole lot, as long as what we get resonates with memory, or allows us to join in. Look at propaganda posters from WWII, or racist posters and knick-knacks (it strains the heart to think people really put these things on their shelves). They are likenesses of types, stereotypes and they seem so disturbingly <em>real. </em>Our minds seem littered with free-floating and very sticky visual memes. Some very dark ones, too.</p>

<p>I think when we say likeness here, we've been covering a lot of ground, some of it right at the edge, or over it. It looks to me like there are multiple kinds and levels of likeness, and associated, but different things outside of it (such as fictional likeness). It's complicated, but at least, we've a toehold on it, enough to raise questions, and make us think.</p>

<p>Fred, I had never thought of Olivier as a closet Marxist! But the second one, about leading the audience by the thought, seems to relate to what I said above, about the <em>audience also being a workman.</em></p>

<p><em>[My coffee has grown cold and the line short at this Starbucks...]<br /></em></p>

 

 

 

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<p>Luis, great stuff. One (maybe not so) small point. He said "leading the audience <em>by the nose </em>to the thought."</p>

<p>You and I keep saying photography is a dance and it is. Neither party is solely responsible. The viewer is not alone in this but neither is the photographer. And neither is the likeness!</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p><strong>Luis:</strong><em> "Othello appears, then disappears, and afterwards the footprints of Shakespeare are suddenly visible. There are lessons there for any creative. That Othello came from your own mind. For a multitude of reasons, you are active, not passive, and the play/movie is not an alien thing entering your consciousness, but it is being reprocessed and has become yours."</em></p>

<p>and just prior to thiscomment:</p>

<p><em>"It's an amazing likeness because you created it."</em></p>

<p>Luis, thanks. I think too that this is essentially what likeness is all about. It is not so much in the portrait, character of theatre or scene, but some construct from the mind of the viewer. This brings me back to the quote of Spinoza, and the postulate that we are essentially comparing everything to some similar matter in the world, which of course includes our personal experience, beliefs, questions, and all. Tapping into this desire for likeness by the performer (Olivier, photographer, writer, architect, poet) is itself an art.</p>

<p>A somewhat limited example from architecture: It is not for nought that bank buildings of the early 20th century looked like fortresses, and modern suburban and otherwise indistinctive home architecture adds tower shapes to roof lines.</p>

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<p>Luis, you're being so ... <em>rational</em> this morning. Why must the whole equal but not exceed the sum of the parts? Is there only re-shufflings and mixings; no genesis? If Luis can be reached by cobbling together bits of John and Bob and Willy, and Bob can be reached by cobbling together bits of John and Luis and Willy and John can be reached by ... and then Ferdinand shows up and, whoa! Nelly, turns out he's also made of Willy and Bob and Luis, but Luis does ... or doesn't have any part of Ferdinand in him that we didn't notice before and if he does, can we get parts of 6.5 billion people to fit into Luis (before coffee and autonomy)?</p>

<p>If you go look at a litter of puppies, how long does it take you to stop seeing the breed and start seeing the individual puppy? Five minutes? Is that only because we've seen so many puppies? Identity is just mathematics?</p>

<p>Conversely, why aren't you moved to do that (respond to; identify; differentiate fully) for most of the people in most of the pictures most of the time?</p>

<p>[This is what you get for answering my earlier questions so nicely; MORE QUESTIONS! Women ... sheesh ... ]</p>

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<p><strong>Julie</strong>, good question, but is not Luis referring to something less detailed, more atmospheric, more interpretable, that triggers a likeness response in the mind of the viewer. I wish we would add to the conversation about portaits and theatre characters the more global portrayal of likeness in art and how that relates to the individual's perception of this and other matter and beliefs in the world of his or her experience. Perhaps a focus that is more macro, les micro? Portraits and portrayals are but a small part of it.</p>
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<p>Arthur, I hope Luis will answer as well. My thoughts are, and what I took Luis to be saying, is not at all that likeness is essentially a construct in the mind of the viewer, but that it is a construct in the mind of the viewer stimulated and directly affected by the portrait (the work of the photographer or the actor). I'll leave Luis to speak for himself, but I tend to reject formulations that emphasize the role of the viewer over the role of the photographer and the photograph (which you seem to be doing, though I'm not positive of that). So I had trouble with your talking about the holocaust relative to your tree photo. I think one risks giving the interpretation of the viewer too much sway. Holocaust, of course, is a deep and profound intimation of emotion and significance. But unless I had something remotely related to holocaust (not overtly, but something like suffering or alienation or ugliness, etc.) that I'd been trying to convey with that photo, I'd completely discount the comment. (And I mean <em>I</em> would, not that you should.) Because I've heard too many wonderful-sounding but far-fetched interpretations of my own work to put too much stock in them in any way relating to the work I did, and consider them simply much more about the way the viewer wanted to look at a photograph.</p>

<p>For me, likeness is achieved by the viewer in touch with what the photographer has actually done and what the subject may have actually put forth. The photographer and the subject imbue the photograph with its stuff. The viewer does not do his/her thing isolated from either the photograph or the photographer. For me, a photograph, a portrait, a work of art is not anything-a-viewer-says-it-is (and I'm not saying you went this far, but that many people do). Some viewers are simply way, way, way off base. That can be because they're biased, they're lousy viewers, they've got an agenda, they've got a narrow focus, they're looking for profundity where it isn't to be found, and all sorts of other reasons.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Arthur, I do appreciate your talking about the kinds of likeness in photographs that is among various elements and qualities. For instance that the texture of skin might be similar to something else in view. I have a favorite portrait that was taken of a friend in front of his favorite tree in Golden Gate Park. I was aware how much the tree at the time related to the texture of his skin and reminded me of it. The tree is blurred in the background (you wouldn't know its a tree) and you don't even really get a visual sense of its texture, but it certainly affected me a lot when I was making the photograph. That translates to how I photographed him. It's an intangible and it's not necessarily visual in a literal way. But it is visual. And it is in there. And some of the viewer's reactions are because of that. Some of the viewer's reactions, as I said above, are because of a whole lot of things unrelated to the photograph as well. That's always fascinating to hear, but doesn't usually feel as if it's about the photograph much.</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Fred, thanks for those points. No, I was not attempting to detach the theatre experience or portrait or landscape image from the creative will or action of the photographer or his subject (if animate), each of which mainly define those works. I was in part raising Spinoza's quotation and my interpretation of its usefulness in understanding art in the sense that whatever the image creator does to convey a likeness to his subject is not at all the end of the likeness perception (see the simple quotation on prior pages, which I trust I am not taking out of context of Spinoza's more global thoughts on this).</p>

<p>Yes, weathered trees on a windy shore of perceptibly distorted or uncommon form do not represent specifically the horrors, impact and lessons of the Holocaust, or the experience of those unfortunate Jews, gypsies, and other socially unacceptable persons to the Nazis. The person who spent some time looking at some of my images is in fact a very sensitive artist, who, while possessing the quality of an active mind (that is, not free from possible exaggeration in his reactions - something not uncommon in artists as opposed to, say, most accountants or engineers) did equate the trees with one or two images he had previously seen of the underfed, sick and marginally alive survivors who (finally!) wandered out and freed from those evil camps of ethnic cleansing destruction at the end of the 2nd world war.</p>

<p>My own approach to landscapes or any other image, not always realised of course, is to use the subject matter in a way as to either show something that the observer may not have previously contemplated (but not necessarily by that, an unlikeness to his other experiences) or to create a dichotomy in the sense of the image being something we see but at the same time being something else (getting closer here to Spinoza and my own approach). It r-reflects my small and intended purpose of attempting to realise an image that is less representational or documentary, and more out-of-frame (it hopefully incites the viewer to make other connections of likeness or context). Therefore, a likeness not in regard to a perception of what it is, but rather what it may be alike to in regard to something else.</p>

<p>I have alas little time to re-read these lines for preciseness of thought, but I think they might clarify my previous thougts about likeness in relation to other subject matter than that presented before the lens and possessed by the photographed subject matter.</p>

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<p><br /> <strong>Julie - "</strong>Luis, you're being so ... <em>rational</em> this morning."</p>

<p><strong> </strong>I scared myself!</p>

<p><strong>JH - "</strong>Why must the whole equal but not exceed the sum of the parts? Is there only re-shufflings and mixings; no genesis?"</p>

<p>I would guess the artist in on first, technically. The Web of Being (for lack of a better name) goes back a long and seamless way. I think this can and does often exceed the sum of its parts. When we have an interactive exchange, in particular. Neither the artist nor the viewer could have realized what happens on their own.</p>

<p><strong>JH - "</strong>If Luis can be reached..."</p>

<p>What do you mean? I don't see this as a mere conceptual Frankenstein-ian game. Define "reached"....is that a convincing enough print to conjure up memories of me? An acceptable back-engineered character from a fictional image?</p>

<p><strong>JH - "...</strong>can we get parts of 6.5 billion people to fit into Luis (before coffee and autonomy)?"</p>

<p>In some ways, yes, and vice versa, but other than to reduce the link to "human", it's too diffuse to be useful.</p>

<p><strong>JH - "</strong>Identity is just mathematics?"</p>

<p>I suppose it could be expressed in that way, or musically, poetically, in dance, photographically, etc. Not <em>just </em>mathematics for me. I think we modulate likeness, and as Arthur keeps reminding us, not just in portraits. We do so for different ends in different pictures, or sometimes very similarly for a series, or because it fits one's style.</p>

<p><strong>Arthur -</strong> "is not Luis referring to something less detailed, more atmospheric, more interpretable, that triggers a likeness response in the mind of the viewer."</p>

<p>Yes, Arthur, I have tried to address the business of 'good likeness' in a broader sense than the portrait/figurative/theatrical angle, because I believe it to be broader. Portraits and portrayals are a significant part of it.</p>

<p><strong>Fred - </strong>Exactly. There's a causal (but not necessarily linear) continuum here. What happens in the viewer's mind (and I've already noted, it can range from the passive to the maximally participatory), even passivity, is connected to what the photographer does with the subject/scene/etc.. Without the 'genesis' of the image (it doesn't have to be a print per se) and creativity leading up to it, the viewer would likely be engaged in other pursuits. I think that in some very rare cases, the viewer can and does go far beyond where the photographer is at. Many photographers are out of touch with their own pictures.<br>

<a name="00Y7EF"></a><br>

<strong>FG - "</strong> For me, a photograph, a portrait, a work of art is not anything-a-viewer-says-it-is..."</p>

<p>A viewer's reaction is not purely about the picture nor about himself, but necessarily a combination of the two. It is a living trace of the viewing. One theme we see recurring here is that connections beget reactions/traces that are not copies of those involved, but mixes. To me, this is inherently beautiful. And rarely totally detached from the image, because if nothing else, an image can function as a Rorschach inkblot test, and I would not underestimate that aspect.<br>

I also appreciate Arthur's comments on subtle, second-order likeness (which seem to me like similes in language). Thanks to the limited nature of living forms, many repeat themselves, for example, dendroid (tree-like) forms. Their fractal nature is found everywhere from trees to kidneys to river beds, neurons, etc.</p>

<p><strong>Arthur - "...</strong> weathered trees on a windy shore of perceptibly distorted or uncommon form do not represent specifically the horrors, impact and lessons of the Holocaust..."</p>

<p>No, but I felt a sense of something suffering, unwillingly distorted, literally truncated.</p>

<p><a name="pagebottom"></a></p>

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<p>Luis, I'm going to use some quotes from <em>Difference & Repetition</em> by Gilles Deleuze (1968) to try and sort of sum up where we agree (I think) and where we part ways (so much nicer than "disagree").<br>

 </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"… When we say … that movement is repetition and that this is our true theatre, we are not speaking of the effort of the actor who ‘repeats’ because he has not yet learned the part. We have in mind the theatrical space, the emptiness of that space, and the manner in which it is filled and determined by the signs and masks through which the actor plays a role which plays other roles; we think of how repetition is woven from one distinctive point to another, including the differences within itself."</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

I think we all agree with that, though "differences within itself" is ambiguous. Yes it is, as you will see ...<br>

 <br>

 </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"… Consider a terrified face (under conditions such that I do not see and do not experience the causes of this terror). This face expresses a possible world: the terrifying world. By ‘expression’ we mean, as always, that relation which involves a torsion between an expressor and an expressed such that the expressed does not exist apart from the expressor, even though the expressor relates to it as though to something completely different.By ‘possible,’ therefore, we do not mean any resemblance but that state of the implicated or enveloped in its very heterogeneity with what envelops it: the terrified face does not resemble what terrifies it, it envelops a state of the terrifying world.<br>

 <br>

"… these relations of development, which form our commonalities as well as our disagreements with the other, also dissolve its structure and reduce it either to the status of an object or to the status of a subject. That is why, in order to grasp the other as such, we were right to insist upon special conditions of experience, however artificial — namely the moment at which the expressed has (for us) no existence apart from that which expresses it: the Other as <em>the expression of a possible world</em>."</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

I may or may not be correct in saying that we all agree with the first paragraph of that quote. Where we part ways is in how we take "possible worlds." It seems to me that Luis et al are saying that "possible worlds" are variations of the existent. I, on the other hand, think that "possible worlds" is expansive, and generative; in excess of the existent; original and originating.<br>

 </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"… it is not enough to oppose two repetitions, one bare and material in accordance with the identity and default of the concept, the other clothed, psychical and metaphysical in accordance with the difference and excess of the always positive Idea. This second repetition should be seen as the ‘reason’ of the first. The clothed and living, vertical repetition which includes difference should be regarded as the cause, of which the bare, material and horizontal repetition (from which a difference is merely drawn off) is only an effect."</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

That (above) really gets to the nub of our differences, in my opinion. I agree with Deleuze; it seems to me that everybody else posting to the thread so far does not.<br>

 <br>

Finally, one last bit that may be too Deleuzian for anybody whos is not used to him, but I love it, so here it is:<br>

 </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"… (Hegel criticized Schelling for having surrounded himself with an indifferent night in which all cows are black. What a presentiment of the differences swarming behind us, however, when in the weariness and despair of our thought without image we murmur ‘the cows’, ‘they exaggerate’, etc.; how differenciated and differenciating is this blackness, even though these differences remain unidentified and barely or non-individuated; how many differences and singularities are distributed like so many aggressions, how many simulacra emerge in this night which has become white in order to compose the world of ‘one’ and ‘they.’) The ultiimate, external illusion of representation is this illusion that results from all its internal illusions — namely, that groundlessness should lack differences, when in fact it swarms with them. What, after all, are ideas, with their constitutive multiplicity, if not these ants which enter and leave through the fracture in the I?"</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Possibly we can all agree that Julie is thoroughly fractured -- and happy to be so.</p>

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