A few days ago, I found myself in a polemic with a Ukrainian woman who had moved to the United States with her two daughters and now writes about how men are tyrants and fools. In her feed there was a photograph taken by her daughter: she lies in the sun, in a bikini—fit, athletic, composed. Her former husband, whom I once knew, was a rather heavy man.
At the same time, The Guardian published photographs of three emaciated Ukrainian soldiers. Their commander, we are told, was “punished”—a word that in military language often means little more than being reassigned. The images are disturbing.
But I will not place these photographs side by side.
If a reader needs an image in order to begin thinking, this is a sign of infantilization.
Human communication has undergone one true revolution: the invention of the name—a unique designation for a unique person. Later came a leap: the invention of the portrait. The face seemed to surpass the name. A name can be changed; a face remains.
But then language asserted itself again and made another leap: it learned to speak about the person. It learned to describe a human being in words. And this proved infinitely more precise and more powerful than any image.
Today’s fixation on images—on photographs and video—is a sign of the internet’s immaturity. It is a regression, not an advance.
For this reason, I prefer to remove the visual layer from my own work. I record podcasts without video, and I would advise others to try the same. My books, too, follow a similar principle—white covers, black text, in the spirit of Jony Ive. As Hans Christian Andersen suggested, the shadow must know its place.
The image is a shadow—of the person, of the world.
The word, the logos, is the invisible substance of life from which that shadow falls.
26 April, 2026.