Régis Durand
[Critic, writer, and curator, lives in Paris.]

 Why is it that so many photographers today are driven to catalogue the traces or signs of what is supposed to appear or happen in the world? How can we explain this mania for the real, for things that, after all, simply exist? 
 Many photographs (perhaps most) ask no more of us than that we bask in the serene contemplation of the represented object in its indisputable presence. 
 There lies something, in the photograph, of unconscious desire, but hardly anything on its surface can lead back to its source—except precisely the sense of its having come from a source, and of the ensuing transformation and loss. 
 The most important development in the photography of the 80s [was] the triumph of a kind of photographic art by artists who firmly refuse to be called photographers. 
 I know very well that there is off-screen space and manipulation in the photograph, but I want to believe anyway that there is also truth. 
 ... even in the absence of any concrete image, photography possesses a strong visual and mental existence. It gives an immediate memory to thought, including and perhaps especially in cases where a photo hasn’t been taken.