The mesmerizing power that the photograph has exercised over our collective imagination has created a situation in which it is hard to imagine other forms for images and image-making activities that might emerge through a reassessment of photography’s position in the world of picture-making technologies. Not limited to photography’s historical or contemporary rehabilitation, this consideration can also change the way that we conceive, construct, use or adapt new technologies, inasmuch as they are structured in a similar way (optical imaging and recording technology) or are conceived and operate within a photographic paradigm of realism (naturalistic and lifelike simulations in the case of digital pictures).

A Blinding Flash of Light presents an unusual model of photography, and traces its elaboration and transformation over a twenty-five year period. In doing so, it also raises questions about the nature and forms of knowledge that might exist between disciplines. For the model of photography proposed is informed by a number of distinct disciplines such as anthropology, art, and the history and sociology of science.