The Melancholic Origins of Photography

In the example of the Corinthian maid image, we see a connection between photographic desire and melancholic loss as described by Freud. Even with the loss of her love-object, the maid seeks to retain something of this man (an indexically based gesture that seems important to this myth's place within photographic history) by drawing his outline on the wall behind him. In his discussion of this image, Batchen makes reference to Victor Burgin's belief that "a psychoanalytic notion of desire [is] a continual repression of and substitution for lack or loss" (113). In Freud's discusion of melancholia, we see the "substitution" that Burgin describes. In attempts to sever its connection from the love-object, Freud notes that the ego itself manages to take up this object and become the site of (now impossible) desire. The ego begins to hate itself (or rather, the person begins to hate what is now contained within his ego).

But in the myth of the Corinthian maid, we see the love-object substituted not by the ego but by the indexical trace of the object itself. This is an external substitution, the love-object for its trace, rather than forcing the love-object upon the (internal) ego. Perhaps here we see a divergence with Freud's theory of melancholia - although not so much as to suggest that a framework of mourning might be more appropriate (this is not to say that a framework of mourning is inappropriate, but rather that it is no more appropriate than one of melancholia). For even though we cannot see the love-object inscribe itself upon the maid's ego, as it is instead inscribed upon her wall, the fact that the lover remains alive (even though he leaves the maid) suggests a potential impossibility of fully detaching from this love-object - an impossibility that may leave its trace not only on the wall but in the ego as well.

The fact that we see the trace left on the wall rather than in the maid's ego (even though we could not, of course, ever actually see this) may owe itself to the anticipatory nature of the loss (here is a downfall of using a framework of mourning - where mourning is connected to death, the anticipatory nature of this loss forecloses death as the reason for desire). Whereas Freudian melancholia operates once the love-object is already lost, the maid here attempts to subvert that loss by tracing her lover's outline on the wall. In this, we see a connection to photography. Photography arguably operates on presence, rather than absence - in that the photographed object must be present for an image to be created. And thus, the photograph works in the same way as the maid's tracing - to foreclose the loss associated with death even as the loss of the object itself is imminent. Although the photograph inevitably fails to prevent death, and even presupposes death as a necessary condition for its creation, it is in the desire to forgo death that this connection can be seen. By the time the maid's lover has died, she, too, will likely be near death. By the time the object of the photograph 'dies,' the photographer, too, may likely be near death. The desire to prevent death is contingent upon the life of the possessor of such desire. When that person is gone, the question of melancholia matters little because the ego in question is gone. Now, a framework of mourning may take over.