Drawing upon a photograph that is ‘written’ in Michel Tournier’s novel The Golden Droplet (1986), this essay in the journal Photographies, makes an exploration of the idea of ‘special being’ as presented by Giorgio Agamben’s Profanations, when being and its image remain inseparable. Lomax’s essay opens up a new and original line of inquiry for the photographic image. Her research looks at how a particular photographic image (of a ‘wild cat’) plays between the double meanings of the term ‘species’: a principle of identity for classification, and ‘specious’, that which gives itself to be seen as beautiful.
In exploring the idea of ‘special being’ as presented by Agamben, Lomax brings forward new material for both the theorisation and practice of photography. Moreover, the significance of ‘special being’ provides a touchstone for the pressing need to intervene within – and equally identify with – the apparatuses that capture our thinking, living and practices as well as writing and the photographic image. The research probes the thinking of Michel Foucault and Agamben as it brings about new Art Writing and offers a methodology that rigorously challenges the division between theory and practice.
An early version of the essay was presented as a paper at the ‘Literary Images’, Image and Language Research Colloquium, RCA (2009). Lomax also published her initial research into Agamben in an article, ‘Besides/in a paradigmatic way’, Journal of Visual Arts Practice (2008).