In this paper I explore the psychoanalytic background of creative photography in the
second public sphere of socialist Hungary. Photography theory informed by Peirce’s
semiotics and psychoanalytical concepts, permeated the European and Transatlantic
art discourse of the seventies, associated with Walter Benjamin’s medium theory, which
was developed in the thirties. In his seminal texts on photography and technical reproduction
Benjamin introduces the concept of optical unconscious , and instead of the artist’s
signature he draws our attention to the porous nature of lens based media letting
the uncontrollable reality seep into picturing; he appreciates the unique and magical
quality not of the photographer, but her/his subject.
