Explaining how to replace object and subject in photography from Baudrillard's point of view (Case Study: Jean Baudrillard’s photo collection; “Ultimate paradox”)

Baudrillard believes that photography has many amazements as the world can fully vanish in a photo. Hence, an image does not reveal reality to us, rather depicts the absence of the world. Likewise, due to this absence and lack of objectivity in photography, one could witness the mutual relationship between the object and the subject and hence acknowledge the astonishing impact of the image.
Baudrillard’s main problem is the reality in today’s world, a reality that is no longer original and real, since hyperreality has now dominated human life.
From his perspective, the image goes from the stage of a reflecting reality to a stage of concealing reality, and then to the stage of concealing the absence of reality, and in the third stage, has no relationships with reality. In the fourth stage, it reaches the integral reality, a sort of ultra reality that terminates all reality, as well as illusion. Baudrillard’s philosophical views have been shown in his artworks, and his photos have a direct relationship with his philosophy. Baudrillard does not seek the truth that is hidden in the image, rather seeks to introduce the hierarchies that guide our perception of the images of the surrounding world, and his writings are meant to elucidate the unreality around us, which is indeed mistakenly considered to be real. We have the tendency to assume that the subject, referring to the photographer, by choosing the object/issue and photographing him, decides what will appear in the form of the object in the photograph, however, Baudrillard reverses this relationship and describes that it is actually the object that discovers the subject by imposing its presence on the subject, and according to Baudrillard’s view, the photographic object has a desire to become an image and at the moment of choosing the frame and the subject, the photographic object passes this desire to the photographer so that he could replicate this desire in his photography. Therefore, in this research along with a discovery on his philosophy and explaining the ultra reality from his viewpoint, a number of his photo collection “Ultimate paradox”,have been exhibited and presented in the 80s and 90s. The main objective and goal of this research is the analysis and examination of ultra reality photography from Baudrillard’s perspectives. In order to do so, in parallel to a wider recognition of his viewpoints, in regard to photography as art, we aim to raise the question as to how reality can disappear and become invisible in photos. The methodology in practice is a descriptive analytic one, which uses literature of Baudrillard’s viewpoints as the main source of research. By doing so, one arrives at such a conclusion that photography can achieve extraordinary qualities once freed from the known aesthetic factor, opening a new perspective to the observer. Simultaneously, analyzing the formation of the bilateral relationship between the object and the subject in photography.