A critical essay collection on photography by the cultural anthropologist and critic Ryuta Imafuku, selected from the writings he has published since 2000 to mark one point of arrival of his criticism. His pen is drawn to the protohistory of the bond between the world and the eye that flickers before, behind and beyond the photograph itself, and follows the proto-photograph, with its emotion, will, desire, urgency, pain and hope, through reflections on Masaaki Yamamura, Haruo Ohara, Joseph Brodsky, Pedro Meyer, Shomei Tomatsu, Claude Levi-Strauss, Miguel Rio Branco, Koji Taki, Sebastiao Salgado and others. A book against an age in which we are photographed before we photograph, in which photography covers daily life and slips from our attentive eyes as an object of thought.