About

The Korzybski + Elstir Project

"Photography as a map"

Irony cannot be absent from this project, both in its name and in its inspiration.

KORZYBSKI, Alfred (1879-1950)

As the inventor of "General Semantics", his aim was to go beyond Aristotelian thinking, which, in his view, leads us to confuse reality with what our brains produce to represent it.

One way of introducing general semantics is to start with the statement « The map is not the territory ». The map is a representation, the result of a cartographer's analysis of the territory. The territory has properties that the cartographer was unable to perceive, or that they chose to ignore because they are not part of the elements needed by the map's user.
When we show a map and say "we're here", we're using language to assert something that appears to be true, but is an abusive identification. We see a strong analogy with photography.

Korzybski had a huge influence on authors such as William Burroughs, Alfred E. Van Vogt and Michel Houellebecq (The map AND the territory, Prix Goncourt 2010). Jorge Luis Borges produced a marvellous short story in which he imagines a map on a scale of 1:1 (the rigour of science), here « the map IS the territory. »

For us, the authors of this project, photography is a kind of mental map, in which, to paraphrase Franz Kafka, « Reality is always unrealistic ».

ELSTIR, no first name, (1918-end of humanity)

He is a fictional character from Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time". Arguably the most important literary work in French culture. Elstir is inspired by Monet, Renoir and many others. He teaches the main character (the narrator) how to observe things differently, among other things. Indeed, Elstir doesn't show things the way he knows them to be: "[...] but according to those optical illusions of which our first vision is made". In these few words, you'll find the mantra of our project.

It's a mise en abyme. An imaginary character teaching a subjective reality... We're not far from "Don Quixote", the first novel of the modern era, in which Cervantes portrays a visionary fantasist who defends truth through lies.

Our goal :

Our will is not a quest for perfection. There's nothing worse, in our opinion, than a photo distorted by cumbersome processes.
Our aim is to capture the moment that reveals a situation to the world. Whether it's funny, moving, reflective or merely aesthetic.
Photography is the art of foreseeing nothing but the unforeseeable; of expecting nothing but the unexpected...thank you in advance for your curiosity and indulgence.

We hope you enjoy discovering our world as much as we enjoyed creating it.