Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Notes on References Introduction 1. Plato’s Allegorical Camera-Cave 2. Plato’s Chora and the Uneasy Place of Photography 3. Iamblichus’s Receptacle of Light 4. Photographing the Divine: Philotheos of Batos 5. Marsilio Ficino: Light and Photosensitivity Coda Notes Bibliography Index

Promotional Information

Through the philosophy of variety of thinkers such as Plato and John Dee, Junko Theresa Mikuriya presents a radical new approach to photographic ontology and history.

About the Author

Junko Theresa Mikuriya is Senior Lecturer in Photography at the London School of Film, Media and Design, University of West London, UK. She is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Arts, University of Kent, UK.

Reviews

Theresa Mikuriya's The History of Light is a startling contribution to the history of photography, to the issue of the relation between philosophy and light, and to accounts of the history of technology. She shows how photography is latent in Platonism and makes powerful persuasive readings to support this. Plato's cave and its arrangement are treated as the description of a camera obscura; the Platonic category of chora is read as photography itself; the mystical union with God can lead to being blinded and is here read as overexposure; Ficino's description of the paradoxical nature of the ascent to light together with the need to bring divine light into the world is treated as a form of photosensitivity. These readings are a rich instrument with which to imagine the history of light. The argument goes a long way to think out Derrida's remark, "Every photograph is of the sun."
*Mark Cousins, of The Architectural Association School of Architecture, UK*

Mikuriya leads us on an intriguing exploration of the ‘deep time’ of photography. This bold and audacious alternative history stretches from the shadows of Plato’s cave to esoteric writings on light and illumination in early Renaissance. It adds a new and compelling dimension to debates around the ‘philosophy of photography’, refusing to naturalize either the photographic or the philosophical, but instead probing the intimate entanglement of these domains.
*Dr. Scott McQuire, Associate Professor and Reader, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Australia*

Theresa Mikuriya sustains her investigation of the historical and philosophical [real] traces of photography all the way back to its earliest possibilities. She teaches us to see before the image and shines light on philosophy, showing where photographs come from, before we even knew they had been, or could be, developed. This metaphysics of the photography is the framing that makes Kodak possible in the centuries before Daguerre arrived. This book should transform our understandings of the visual.
*John Hutnyk, Adjunct Professor, Global Urban and Social Studies Department, Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Australia*