Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image

"No one believes any longer in the ontological identity of model and image, but all are agreed that the image helps us to remember the subject and to preserve him from a second spiritual death. Today the making of images no longer shares an anthropocentric utilitarian purpose. It is no longer a question of survival after death, but of a larger concept, the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real, with its own temporal destiny." --Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image, 10.

Of course it's reductionistic, but I believe that it's possible to summarize the aesthetic principle of an artist, or thinker, in a single quotation without much detriment to the complexities of processes of production of what the principle substitutes for, in sum, synechdochically.

In the above quotation, I approach Bazin's aesthetic principle, I hope.