Rola fotografii w historii
The Role of Photography in History

Summary/Abstract: Do we delve into history whole looking at photographs? Do we take them while thinking about writing history? Roland Barthes extracted the difference between participation in history and its study. The parallel nature of those activities is probably impossible. The division into the moment of taking a photograph – recording reality and watching it, i.e. transition into history, is much too simple. The role played by the photograph in history, its recording, deciphering and deformation is highly ambivalent. Hence the form of this text is somewhat unsteady and mosaic-like, and derived of the inner light that breaks through chaos. It introduces anxiety, just as in the case of the object of its interest. The fleeting nature of photographs forces us to assume an erroneous interpretation, the role of an accident, and distracts attention focused on the theme and the author’s intentions, the creation of the portrayed. Photographs, however, still continue to be the most universal manner of recording, an imprint of reality. Aware of the fleeting nature of memory and how written history does not adhere to the world, which we recall or in whose appearance, we believe, the photograph is the only possible way.

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