Episode 2 of the BBC's Genius of Photography series; this time focusing on the inter-war period in Europe and two approaches to the medium. One documentary, as typified by the typologies of Karl Blossfeldt and Bernd and Hilla Becher and one opposed to objectivity and the recording of the world 'as it really is.'

As an example of the latter, they bring up Man Ray and his work, "Dust Breeding,' (1920) a photograph of an artwork by Marcel Duchamp.

'Dust Breeding' delights in photography's infinite capacity for ambiguity and mocks its obligations as a sober recorder of reality.

David Campany continues:

There's no sense of scale, no reference to anything that we'd really be familiar with ... it's being offered to us, perhaps, as something between an artwork and a document. If it's an artwork, it's haunted by the idea of the document, and if it's a document, it's haunted by the idea of the artwork.

Peter Barberie goes on to talk about it in relation to the Surrealists and 'found objects':

[A found object could] disrupt your mental state and thereby project you into another consciousness or another understanding.

Interesting enough in relation to photography, though you could of course say the same about techno.