This project operates at the intersection of photographic practice and philosophy, with a focus on the materiality of sandstone. It aims to move beyond the traditional dualism of the subject as the original and the photograph as its secondary representation. The framework of this project is developed through the exchange between New Materialism, Deconstruction, Deleuzian Simulation, Bergsonian time and the practice of photography in its analogue, digital and virtual forms. 

This thesis concludes that, when the image and material surfaces of photographs actively engage with one another, the photograph can enhance our direct experience of materials and even go beyond phenomenology, offering knowledge that we would not have known otherwise. This type of autonomous photography breaks the linearity of time, highlighting the coexistence of past and present embedded simultaneously within the material presences of photography.