In The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, photography is sometimes presented as proof of existence. However, this idea is troubled when Leo cannot get any photo of himself to develop properly, whereas photos of his cousin taken at the same time develop normally (81-82). It is important to consider how Leo overcomes this difficulty in his own mind: “I took a photograph of him, and as we watched the paper in the developing pan his face appeared…It was me who’d taken the picture, and if it was proof of his existence, it was also proof of my own…Whenever I took it out of my wallet and looked at him, I knew I was really looking at me” (82).

Photography is also used as a substitute for human contact, as a way of knowing others, as in the case when Leo admits that he has studied all known photographs of his son and when wants to yell at the photograph of his dead son, pictured in a newspaper at Starbucks: Isaac! Here I am! Can you hear me? (77).

Photography is a way of knowing the world that we see. Note the distinction between knowing and seeing. This is best illustrated by the blind man who has been to Antarctica and who takes a photo of Charlotte Singer so that, when he recovers his sight, he can know what he has been seeing (39).

Photography is also the conceit of a perfect memory, and of the promise of memorializing change, as in when Leo wishes he could photograph Alma every day of her life, trying to capture her growth and change over time (90). (In fact a man tried to do this, photograph himself every day of his life, and produced a poignant record of it, right up until the moment he died of cancer: full collection here; overview account here).
Photography is also the illusion of clarity, as when Alma refers to vivid memory as a photograph. But faded memories are also photographs, just photographs of other photographs (192).

And yet... to use Leo’s favorite expression, in all of these examples of photography, the novel undermines the authority of photography. Photography is supposed to do those things. The characters want it to do those things, but photography fails. As an act of representation that is supposedly authoritative and complete, never lying, always transparent and self-evident, photography is peculiarly insufficient in this novel.

–Christopher Conway