An optogram is an image fixed on the retina by a biological, photochemical process. In the late nineteenth century, it was widely believed that optograms could be excised from dead bodies to procure their final visions. Optograms were most frequently compared to photographs, so that the retina of the eye was likened to the sensitive plate in a camera. Just as photography became capable of superseding human vision in the 1870s, optograms discursively came to light as latent photographs, making photography the original for preconscious sight. These historical inversions of primacy challenge our conceptions of the relation between nature and culture in photography, with the cultural invention preceding the natural discovery of optography. This article examines how an incidental, speculative, and ultimately forgotten discovery in the physical sciences was deployed rhetorically to reinforce personal or disciplinary beliefs about what photography was and what it could do, in realms ranging from physiological laboratories to science fiction, from police departments to courtrooms. Analysis of optographic discourse indicates that the true value of photography in the late nineteenth century was not primarily in the photograph’s relation to its indexical referent, but in the possibility that it might grant access to seeing as another living being.

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自然照片：视光图和捕捉视觉的虚构

视光图是通过生物光化学过程固定在视网膜上的图像。在 19 世纪后期，人们普遍认为可以从尸体上切除视力图以获得他们最终的视力。视光图最常与照片进行比较，因此眼睛的视网膜被比作相机中的敏感板。正如摄影在 1870 年代变得能够取代人类视觉一样，视觉图作为潜在的照片散布地出现，使摄影成为前意识视觉的原始图像。这些对首要地位的历史倒置挑战了我们对摄影中自然与文化之间关系的概念，文化发明先于光学的自然发现。本文探讨了一个偶然的、投机的、最终被遗忘的物理科学发现被用修辞方式部署，以加强个人或学科对摄影是什么以及它可以做什么的信念，从生理实验室到科幻小说，从警察部门到法庭。对光学话语的分析表明，19 世纪后期摄影的真正价值主要不在于照片与其指示对象的关系，而在于它可能允许人们以另一种生物的身份观看。