EXCERPT Of what do these essays speak? Of photography in the flesh—but not the flesh of the photographer. Myriads of negatives tell of the world, speaking in clichés among themselves, constituting a vast conversation, filling a photosphere that is located nowhere. But one single photo is enough to express a real that all photographers aspire one day to capture, without ever quite succeeding in doing so. Even so, this real lingers right there on the negatives’ surface, at once lived and imperceptible. Photographs are the thousand flat facets of an ungraspable identity that only shines—and at times faintly—through something else. What more is there to a photo than a curious and prurient glance? And yet it is also a fascinating secret…