Faustian

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
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Word Origin & History

Faustian

1876, a reference to Johann Faust (1488-1541), Ger. wandering astrologer and wizard, who was reputed to have sold his soul to the Devil. He was the hero of dramas by Marlowe and Goethe.

Matching Quote

"To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power. A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words, is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to build modern organic societies. But print seems a less treacherous form of leaching out the world, of turning it into a mental object, than photographic images, which now provide most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of the present. What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation, as are handmade visual statements, like paintings and drawings. Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire."

-Susan Sontag

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Faustian

Faus·ti·an