Thread of light: the paradoxical nature of the photographic frame

The paradoxical nature of the photograph lies in the noeme or the time of the ‘that-has-been' according to Barthes. Derrida has noted that the introduction of a technical apparatus (such as a prosthetic body or machine) is what allowed the time for reflection, or a time that made possible to ‘view viewing.’ Geoffrey Batchen further points out that it was the photographic apparatus that allowed for this possibility to take place. Updating Batchen’s argument of the window metaphor, I want to put my attention solely on the temporality of the photographic frame. Via the photographic apparatus, the photographic frame (or window) is already a given, a pre-existing frame that captures time and can allow time to turn back on itself. Within the frame, the possibilities of movement and stillness coincide, opening up the space of the present tense that enfolds infinite pasts. Hovering in this paradoxical state, passive and active forces take place at the same time.