However beautiful, images are only instruments meant to teach truth and inspire contemplation. The realities they struggle to represent are beyond the power of mortals to imagine.

To discover the ultimate Reality of life — the Absolute, the eternal, God — you must cease to try to grasp it in the forms of idols. These idols are not just crude images, such as the mental picture of God as an old gentleman on a golden throne. They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth, which block the unreserved opening of mind and heart to reality. The legitimate use of images is to express the truth, not to possess it.

Images "stand in" to represent what is in fact unknowable, non-ceptual and non-evidential to us, who are negatively situated on this side of consciousness. Such images can only be real in themselves, however, in so far as they represent, or re-present, the eternal reality of THAT. When they become real in themselves, then we are only over-stating them and have become idolaters guilty of the error of the Sanskrit word upadhi, which is treating THAT as if it is only this, and so confusing the lesser with the greater.

I believe that the image I create must contain within it everything man concerns himself with: his hopes, his fears, his tears. And I find that a great deal of the imagery in use today precludes most of these concerns.

We feel that our pictures demonstrate our aesthetic beliefs, some of which we, therefore, list:

Images of people actually objectively exist, and on some levels they reflect the peoples’ innermost worlds, including their thoughts, qualities, and personalities. Though some peoples’ actions do not match their words, I think this can be controlled. These people can hide their feelings. But hypocrites who perform as upright people aren’t very convincing.

What I have been talking about is knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, is not a good word for this. Perhaps one would rather say my image of the world. Knowledge has an implication of validity, of truth. What I am talking about is what I believe to be true; my subjective knowledge. It is this Image that largely governs my behavior. In about an hour I shall rise, leave my office, go to a car, drive down to my home, play with the children, have supper, perhaps read a book, go to bed. I can predict this behavior with a fair degree to accuracy because of the knowledge which I have: the knowledge that I have a home not far away, to which I am accustomed to go. The prediction, of course, may not be fulfilled. There may be an earthquake, I may have an accident with the car on the way home, I may get home to find that my family has been suddenly called away. A hundred and one things may happen. As each event occurs, however, it alters my knowledge structure or my image. And as it alters my image, I behave accordingly. The first proposition of this work, therefore, is that behavior depends on the image.

“Truth” is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality...One can't possess reality, one can possess images — one can't possess the present but one can possess the past.

This realistic image, however, does not catch at all what really is, but what should not be - death and misery - what should not exist, from our moral and humanistic point of view. And at the same time making an aesthetic and commercial, perfectly immoral use and abuse of this misery. Images that actually testify, behind their pretended "objectivity", of a deep denial of the real, and of an equal denial of the image - assigned to present what does not even want to be represented, assigned to the rape of the real by burglary.

That we are not totally transformed, that we can turn away, turn the page, switch the channel, does not impugn the ethical value of an assault by images. It is not a defect that we are not seared, that we do not suffer enough, when we see these images. Neither is the photograph supposed to repair our ignorance about the history and causes of the suffering it picks out and frames. Such images cannot be more than an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers. Who caused what the picture shows? Who is responsible? Is it excusable? Was it inevitable? Is there some state of affairs which we have accepted up to now that ought to be challenged? All this, with the understanding that moral indignation, like compassion, cannot dictate a course of action.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth.

For many reasons, I believe more in books than images. The image is an idol in an idolatrous world. In a book, there’s no idolatry, even if you can idolise the characters. I believe in the book; when you immerse yourself in a huge book, it’s like an event, an extraordinary one.