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15 only photograph it, as if one instantaneously had to take its image by surprise at its birth: immobile, monumental, impassive, singular, abstract ,inretreatfromalltreatment,unreachableintheendbyanyperiphrasis , by any transfer, by rhetoric itself, by the eloquence of transposition . Reticent like a word that knows how to keep silent in order to say so much, a word frozen in its tracks [tombée en arrêt], or pretending , rather, to be freeze-framed [arrêt sur image] before a video camera . An oracle of silence. It gives itself in refusing itself. One time for all times. As soon as it takes [prend] in language (but who will translate this prendre in the phrase “dès qu’elle prend dans la langue”), and once it is taken by it, it resembles a photograph. The sentence takes in photography,ortakesaphotographofthelanguagethatphotographsit (like the photographer who photographs himself when he takes a photographofhimselfinthisbook ).Theyaretaken,theoneandtheother, in the unique example of this apparition, this sentence here and not another, in this irreplaceable language; it is thus, it was thus, it happened , it took place, this sentence here, one time for all times, as “we owe ourselves to death.” Still VIII Prendre une photographie, to take a photograph, prendre en photographie, to take a photograph but also to take in photography: is this translatable ? At what moment does a photograph come to be taken? And taken by whom? I am perhaps in the process, with my words, of making oV withhisphotographs,oftakingfromhimthephotographsthatheonce took.Canoneappropriateanother’smourning?Andifaphotographis taken as one takes on mourning [prend le deuil], that is, in separation, how would such a theft be possible? But then also, how could such a theft be avoided? 16 • 5 • ...

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