Photography Theory's Metamorphosis into Theories of the Virtual Image

If there ever was a founding father of photography theory, and if that did not sound terribly patriarchal (and an insult to the very feminist preoccupations manifested in his work), this person would be the artist, writer and professor Victor Burgin. As editor of the 1982 collection of essays and key text for photography students Thinking Photography, Burgin boldly called for and inaugurated a systematic critical theoretical approach to the domain of the most everyday, democratic and banal means of image-making: photography and the ubiquitous photographic image. His démarche has been not only written down, but eminently visual as well: over the past fifty years, Burgin has not ceased to question and expose pre-formatted modes of representation, both in his writings and in his artistic work, while tirelessly inventing forms for what he calls “psychical realism”, seeking to represent the psychic reality of human perception. From the relative remoteness of our rural locations in France and Greece respectively, Burgin and I met for this interview in cyberspace, i.e. by email. Always attentive and approachable despite his infinite, intimidating erudition, Burgin discusses the sweeping changes in photography brought about by technology, and virtuality, which is, after all, ancient property of the image. His perspective is that of an intellectual equipped with a virtual camera in cyberspace, which keeps him astoundingly at the forefront of what we still call “photography”.