Vilem Flusser Quotes & Sayings

The act of photography is like going on a hunt in which photographer and camera merge into one indivisible function. This is a hunt for new states of things, situations never seen before, for the improbable, for information. — Vilem Flusser

All incoming bits of information have, simultaneously, a tentacular, optic, and sexual dimension. Its world is not doubtful, but surprising; vampyroteuthic thinking is an unbroken stream of Aristotelian shock. — Vilem Flusser

Human engagement for the storage of information in opposition to death cannot be measured with the same scales used by the natural scientist. Carbon-dating tests measure the natural time according to the information loss of specific radioactive atoms. However, the artificial time of human freedom ("historical time") cannot be measured by simply turning carbon-dating formulas around, so that they now measure the accumulation of information. — Vilem Flusser

For there is a general desire to be endlessly remembered and endlessly repeatable. — Vilem Flusser

He who writes must master the rules of grammar. He who shoots photographs needs only to follow the instructions as given by the camera ... This leads to the paradox that the more people shoot photographs, the less they are capable of deciphering them. — Vilem Flusser

Both those taking snaps and documentary photographers, however, have not understood 'information.' What they produce are camera memories, not information, and the better they do it, the more they prove the victory of the camera over the human being. — Vilem Flusser

Communication is an artificial, intentional, dialogic, collective act of freedom, aiming at creating codes that help us forget our inevitable death and the fundamental senselessness of our absorb existence. — Vilem Flusser

Changing the question 'free from what?' into 'free for what?'; this change that occurs when freedom has been achieved has accompanied me on my migrations like a basso continuo. This is what we are like, those of us who are nomads, who come out of the collapse of a settled way of life. — Vilem Flusser

Human beings forget they created the images in order to orientate themselves in the world. Since they are no longer able to decode them, their lives become a function of their own images: Imagination has turned into hallucination. This — Vilem Flusser

Photographers encode their concepts as photographic images so as to give others information, so as to produce models for them and thereby to become immortal in the memory of others. — Vilem Flusser

Custom is a shroud that conceals everything. Not without first encountering the uncustomary will we be able to recognize what is customary and, more importantly, to change it. Such is the impulse behind our conversation with the vampryoteuthis — Vilem Flusser

Our thoughts, feelings, desires and actions are being robotized; 'life' is coming to mean feeding apparatuses and being fed by them. In short: Everything is becoming absurd. So where is there room for human freedom? — Vilem Flusser

Photographers, it is true, do not work but they do do something: They create, process, and store symbols. — Vilem Flusser

The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon this possibility of freedom - and thus its significance - in a world dominated by apparatuses; to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give significance to their lives in the face of the chance necessity of death. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us. — Vilem Flusser

With every (informative) photograph, the photographic program becomes poorer by one possibility while the photographic universe becomes richer by one realization. — Vilem Flusser