“For the photograph's immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolute superior, somehow eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past ('this-has-been'), the photograph suggests that it is already dead.”
![“... if [a photograph is] unbelievably real it becomes superreal or another kind of super real, better than real... [it] also can be, I think, so heartfelt that you almost can get a pang of compassion for the thing.” quote by Ralph Eugene Meatyard](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/121/ralph-eugene-meatyard-48015_compassion_if-a-photograph-is-unbelievably-real-it_929695.jpg)
