man & nature # 129 ~ say what?

Mid-AM fog 'n smog ~ Glen Island - western end of Long Island Sound, NYC • click to embiggen

... the photograph has a dual function. It is (at once) a fetish object and a transformational object .... [T]he photograph is also the means by which the shadow of the object understood as the real falls on the subject. The moment in which the shadow of the object fall on the the subject may be understood as the aesthetic moment of photography, and the affect of this moment is of a transformation of the unthought known into thought.

It may be said that transformative experience of the self based upon an uncanny encounter with the real has been at the heart of our persistent (but irrational) faith in photography. It is a faith which precisely cuts across our more rational investments in, and our knowledge about, the truth status of photography - because it is placed in a real located ultimately in our own interior worlds rather than in an exterior one. Sarah Kember, from her essay, Photography and Realism

In other words, nothing is real - it's all in your head (according to Ms. Kember).

You know, like in this post's picture - everything in my interior world tells that the pictured person (person? what's a person?) in some unknowable exterior world is engaged in an activity that I assume to be "fishing" - a "concept" derived from an irrational faith based upon my rational investments in, and my knowledge about, the truth status of photography. However, he may actually be driving a Formula One car in the Brazilian Grand Prix. Who can tell?

Nevertheless, if he is actually "fishing", is he attempting to catch a "fish" or is he only "fishing" for an interior-ized idea of a concept of "fish"? Who can tell? And, can you actually pan fry the concept of a "fish"? Should you use "butter"?

I'm soooo confused.