... be easier to identify a particularpathological condition from an abstracted image than from thecontingent forms it actually takes. Photographs make available anarchive of diseases unfamiliar ... lessknowable in the absence of these images: our familiarity withtropical islands and deserts, anacondas and aardvarks, stems, inthe main, from lens-based imagery. (Perhaps zoological andbotanical ... produces images automatically, as if unaided by anoperator. For instance, a French caricature from 1840 makesfun of a photographer dozing while his apparatus does all the work.Photographic art,...