These-Have-Been
Not the absence of the photographic referent but its multiplication to the point of suffocation: a past in the plural, irreducible to a single body, yet no less real. The generative image is not orphaned of its referent — it is overwhelmed by referents.
Roland Barthes fixed the essence of photography in a formula: that-has-been. The photograph does not say that the thing resembles, but that the thing was — that before the lens there necessarily stood a real. Hence its melancholy and its power of mourning.
The generative image seems to annul the formula: nothing stood before any lens. The hasty conclusion is that we have entered the age of the image without a referent, of the pure simulacrum. It is exactly the opposite. The noeme of the generative image is not the absence of that-has-been but its multiplication to the point of suffocation: these-have-been. A past in the plural, irreducible to a single body, yet no less real.
Every convincing detail of a synthetic face was once someone’s — the multitude has hidden itself perfectly behind a single wrinkle. The image is not orphaned of its referent; it is inhabited by too many.
Genealogy
- 2026Revista Cultura · „Carnea statistică”
The reformulation of the Barthesian noeme for the generative image.
Related concepts
Theoretical dialogue
- Roland Barthes — „that-has-been” („ça-a-été”), from „Camera Lucida”.
References
- Carnea statistică · Revista Cultura, 2026