In this post I  have combined two minor photographic projects,  made  a copy in the form of re-photography,  and started  to explore  the idea of simulacrum in relation to photogprahy. Simulacrum is a Latin term denoting an image, likeness or semblance and  this definition of the concept has obvious application to a medium characterised by its capacity to generate nearly facsimile copies.

The two minor projects are  the  nostalgic pleasures one, which involves  using expired  Fujifilm  Superia 200 ASA  film  and a 1960's  Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex S (SLR) with  its nostalgia for and a deep sense of loss of a world disappearing. This  is combined  with the Roadside project, which involves  exploring the various roadsides that I walk along in the morning and the afternoon. 

The above roadside picture  was made in the late afternoon in autumn  with this  photographic equipment. 

 It is a hybrid image as the negative has become  a digital photo rather than a print.   This digital file can be transmitted around the world from email to email, blog to Flickr, website to website, uploaded and downloaded.  In this  process of repetition the hybrid image  becomes a digitally reproduced network image and  a copy of a copy of a copy etc.   

Now to the questioning. Does  this process of repetition  lead to  good copies and bad copies? Does the process of repetition and copy involve a simulacrum? If so how  do we understand a  simulacrum? Is a  simulacrum  a  degraded copy of the original, an endlessly degraded copy, or is it something different?

Plato held that a  simulacrum  a  degraded copy of the original. The  simulacrum is often understood as referring  to the  increasingly “hyperreal” status of certain aspects of contemporary culture (Baudrillard) and this was popular in the postmodern art world.   Or. alternatively,  it  pertains to a specific type of copy—the false copy that produces a semblance of reality. 

The history of photography  has a tradition of  photography that  is  staging,   presents simulated environments for the camera,  or replicates  something that is fake eg., photographing a  fake town, or re-photogpaphy.   The above re-photograph roadside picture, for instance,  was made in the mid-winter of 2025 with a digital camera and it does not produce a perfect copy: this repetition is a resemblance that bears difference to the first photo. Seeing it as a false degraded copy as it circulates the internet is to see it  negatively.  

 Gilles Deleuze  argues in his project of overturning Platonism, if  the copy is an image endowed with resemblance, then the  simulacrum is an image without resemblance --- a  semblance rather than a likeness. It is difference from, rather than identity with,  that  which it purports to copy. This views the copy positively -- difference is internal.   

It calls into question the very idea of copy and original.  

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