Fotografia w pułapce – między bazą danych a narracją
Photography entrapped – between database and narration

Summary/Abstract: The starting point for the article is a comparison of two understandings of photography: one presents photography as a pure information on physical entities of stream of light, another emphasis the importance of image in expressing of human experience. The text is parted into three sections. In the first one, regarding to texts by Bernd Stiegler, Umberto Eco, Lev Manovich and Siegfried Zielinski I consider the definitions of photographical archive and database. I put a thesis that a notion of photographical archive is used for bodies of collections that contains varied kinds of objects: images, texts and material items, while database in usually connected to digital images. The second part presents the process of passing from data to the memory. Jean-François Lyotard’s and Aleida Assmann’s theories on memory let me shape an idea that a narration is a tool that organizes both an archive and database. The last part is a comparison of two artworks. I contrast Akram Zaatari’s archival project “Twenty-Eight Nights and a Poem” to Mikoãaj Dãugosz’ “Real Photo” installation, that uses fragments of internet database. My final thesis is that data, which are inscribed in photosensitive emulsion and stored as digital information, are equally dependent on human narration that make a sense of it.

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