La muerte de la fotografía

The "death of photography" is a metaphor of the advent of digital photography. It refers to the end of a medium whose messages were indexical signs of referential objects. Digital image making creates pictures which have lost their referent, but such loss of the photographic referent already existed in traditional photography. Several forms and modalities of this disappearance of the referent in traditional photography are the topic of this paper, e. g., falsification by retouch or the total abstraction from referent in "abstract photography". Special attention is given to the loss of the referent due to photographic self-reference. The photo in the photo, but also the abstract photo aim at hiding the photographic referent partly or even completely. The paper argues that the postphotographic art of Concrete Photography has arrived at photos which are no longer indexical pictures, but must be described as genuine icons