Why complicate in this way an experience which we have many times every day—the experience
of looking at a photograph? Because the simplicity with which we usually treat the experience is
wasteful and confusing. We think of photographs as works of art, as evidence of a particular truth, as likenesses as news items. Every photograph is in fact a means of testing, confirming and constructing a total view of reality. Hence the crucial role of photography in ideological struggle. Hence the necessity of our understanding a weapon which we can use and which can be used against us.