Edward Said
[Writer and critic, b. 1935, Jerusalem, British-ruled Palestine, d. 2003, New York.]
What we must eliminate are systems of representation that carry with them the authority which has become repressive because it doesn’t permit or make room for interventions on the part of those represented.
...it is sensible to begin by asking the beginning questions, why imagine power in the first place, and what is the relationship between one's motive for imagining power and the image one ends up with.
But I do not know whether the photograph can, or does, say things as they really are. Something has been lost. But the representation is all we have.
