Word Revel

Actual rating: 4.5 stars

Initial thoughts: I expected this book to be rooted more in theory. Instead, Flusser set out to contribute hypotheses to the discourse of photography. He did mention this in the foreword though, so that was clear from the beginning. Towards a Philosophy of Photography is not solely about photography but about the deconstruction of information—how it's encoded and decoded, the cultural influences and how it is conveyed. Flusser broke down photography into the image, the apparatus and the functionary/photographer, which added much clarity to his discussion.

When he did refer to other thinkers like Marx and Kafka, his survey of their theories in relation to photography were extremely brief. They would've benefited a clearer analysis but that wasn't Flusser's intention, thus he didn't even include a bibliography at the end.