reality is, in Viktor Shklovsky’s word, de-familiarized. What is being urged is
an aggressive relation to all subjects. Armed with their machines, photographers
are to make an assault on reality—which is perceived as recalcitrant, as only
deceptively available, as unreal. “The pictures have a reality for me that the
people don’t,” Avedon has declared. “It is through the photographs that I know
them.”
