The text is a review/critique (not in its formal, philosophical

meaning) of the text Photography Is Magic (Aperture, 2015), which

around the text is said to deal with ideas about how photography
relates to magic, esoterism and those kinds of beliefs; additionally,
the text is said to deal with kind of contemporary photographic
practice that borrows from various modernist formalisms, abstraction
and appropriation art, alongside images that find their partial
originality in the tools they utilize, within the wide context of network
culture and the digital image.
Furthermore, in the following paragraphs the author criticizes the
book in mainly three forms: First, by the appellative of antiquate,
specifically its said metaphorically that in the book they are refer as
Sophocles referred to the magoi in the 4th Century BCE: crafty
priests. Other badly founded references related to Enlightment
thinking about photography, although photography was introduce in
1839, and major Enlightment thinking was 17 and 18 century (Kant
died in 17241804, and he is kind of the last one); I also do not
understand the use of the word primitivism.
I ignore what Photography Is Magic (Aperture, 2015), or Cottons
argument is, but the critique is sincerely not good; two paragraphs
worth analyzing to see that Blights own agenda impedes him to really
look through his object of analysis:

Historically, magic has been used as accusation to reinforce cultural

legitimacy. In early Christianity, making the sign of the crossor
perhaps in the context of the books illustrations, the sign of the
colour-field abstractionwas considered deviant by the Roman
authorities, who portrayed it as decadent and corrupt. One might
draw humorous parallels with a certain brand of artist (or those that
follow them) in New York or London now, which use Photoshop to
conjure pixels into cool swathes of pink or bright green.

First, he takes the point of early Christians, as seen by the authority.

Social relations in ancient Rome are of such a complexity that I would
ignore usually in an Internet article the mediocrity of an inaccuracy;
but I just do not know what and where he mean early Christians?
Italy? How early? Anyway, religious practices were prohibited to
Christians for totally different reasons. The books illustrator is
ambiguous. I am not sure whether he meant Cotton, or early
Christian book? Which? Furthermore, most probably early Christian
did not exert their symbol as a deviant form, like New York or London
pinks or bright greens pixels would. The former were seen like that,
the latter want to be seen.

The text is just full of biases, for example the notions of reality from
from Lacan, through Baudrillard, to Zizek is just a naming of people
that will the paragraph a ridiculous importance, but it ignores the fact
that is self-destructive; it show the miniature theoretical background
from where the critique is coming. It is like saying, the books
definition on this is not good because it does not agree with the
postmodern (or whatever other kind, postmodern taken here for the
specificity) idea of it In short, it does not agree with the people I
believe in, so its wrong, and to prove it I will just say that it lacks
agreement with the people I believe in

It is interesting that to oppose and organize an idea of history in terms

of photography and magic, the author rejects history as the base and
proposes a totally idea-lize version of the relationship. The author
might seem interesting through the magnifying glass of its own words,
but once seen in context its feeble concepts vanish in a truly act of
magic. What is left if we are to judge all photographic approaches
under the eyes not of historical thinking but under a reductionism that
fetishizes the idea of contemporaneousness. In easier terms, a
horrible world would be preparing if all that we can quote (like the
author) is a few conceptual artist of 40 years ago to base our
arguments, and books that do not go further down the 2000s.