The Image's “Odradek”

Abstract

This text examines the concept of "noise" (noise, distortion, interruption, deviation) in photography, moving beyond a mere technical error and treating it as a constitutive element that reveals the ontological status of the image. Drawing on the theoretical framework developed through Kafka's Odradek figure, Sartre's subject-centered understanding of meaning, and Spinoza's concept of ideas, and considering Serres' noise theory, Benjamin's dialectical image, and contemporary discussions of glitches, the study investigates how noise in photography subverts the subject-object relationship. The work conceptualizes the phenomenon of chance as the "time form of noise" and interprets images containing noise/distortion as spatial crystallizations of time. Digital glitches, analog distortion, emptiness in the frame, contextual shifts, and physical interventions are considered different manifestations of parasitic aesthetics. Within this framework, noise is not positioned as a malfunction outside the established order, but rather as a necessity that reveals the internal contradictions of the order itself, an appearance in which truth reveals itself.