It may clarify what we mean by a trace if we ask how a drawing differs from a photograph. A drawing is a translation. That it is to say each mark on the paper is consciously related, not only to the real or imagined "model", but also to every mark and space already set out on the paper. Thus a drawn or painted image is woven together by the energy ( or the lassitude, when drawing is weak) of countless judgements. Every time a figuration is evoked in a drawing, everything about it has been mediated by consciousness, either intuitively or systematically, In a drawing an apple is made round and spherical; in a photograph roundness and the light and shade of the apple are received as a given. -- This difference between making and receiving also implies a very different relation to time, independent of the living time of what it portrays. The photograph, by contrast, receives almost instantaneously -- usually today at a speed which cannot be perceived by the human eye. The only time contained in a photograph is the isolated instant of what it shows. -- There is a another important difference within the times contained by the two kinds of images. The time which exists within a drawing is not uniform. The artist gives more time to what she or he considers important. A face is likely to contain more time than the sky above it. Time in a drawing accrues according to human value. In a photograph time is uniform : every part of the image has been subjected to a chemical process of uniform duration. In the process of revelation all parts were equal. -- These differences between a drawing and a photograph relating to time lead us to the most fundamental distinction between the two means of communication. The countless judgements and decisions which constitute a drawing are systematic. That is to say that they are grounded in an existent language. The teaching of this language and its specific usages at any given time are hystorically variable. A master-painter's apprentice during the Renaissance learnt a different practice and grammar of drawing from a Chinese apprentice during Sung period. But every drawing, in order to re-create appearances, has recourse to a language. -- Photography, unlike drawing, does not posses a language. The photographic image is produced istantaneously by the reflection of light ; its figuration is not impregnated by experience or consciousness. -- Barthes, writing about photography, talked of "humanity encountering for the first time in its hystory messages without a code. Hence the photograph is not the last (improved) term of the great family of images : it corresponds to a decisive mutation of informational economics." The mutation being that photographs supply information without having a language of its own. -- Photographs do not translate from appearances. They quote from them. -- John Berger / Appearances