This work is a result of organizing and making some sense out of a pile of marginal notes - thoughts about the image in the last 5 years or so. Even if it grounds itself in the composition of photographic image, its contents are so undeniably abstract and general that they are applicable to almost all visual arts.

Based on the so called "pure photography" (formally minimalist, rejecting all of the semantic content not essential for the photographic medium itself), the thought already starts on a quite abstract ground, and develops as an deductive organism, dealing with final, absolute, rejecting any hypothesis. I still do hope to avoid the trap of becoming dogmatic - even at the price of seemingly contradictory lines: sometimes a complex system of ideas does not translate well to the linear language we speak. That's where formalism has to give up, just so that something gets to be written at all. I am saying all this as an recommendation for the best reading approach: logic should, at least to some degree, be left aside.

Just the same as enjoying the images themselves, we should read this beyond our rational comprehension, using those intuitive visual thoughts of ours which exist only before they get grabbed by the prudence of our intellect. This is also a denial of fear that uneducated eye might miss something in here - it's all about primary biological functions of first our senses, and then our spirit as well. Problems are of the opposite nature (and that is somewhat sarcastic) - in deformations our senses and spirit experience through ill education, deadening, pollution by some not quite natural usages.

Therefore, it is much more likely, that every time we embark on exploring the primary visual we'll have to throw something of our "knowledge" away, than to learn anything radically new. It's all in our eye, already.
introduction