Activist Photo Spaces: ‘Situation Awareness’ and the Exhibition of the Building Workers Unions (original) (raw)
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War against War!: pictures as means of social struggle in post-First World War Europe
Visual Studies, 2017
Germany 1925: Ernst Friedrich, a young anarchist and anti-militarist activist, publishes one of the first independent books composed only of photographs and captions: War against War! His stated goal is to employ classified pictures of the First World War (WWI) to unmask nationalistic propaganda and expose the false narratives of militaristic rhetoric. Published on the eve of the golden age of photojournalism, this book is the first grassroots attempt to use photography as a means of social and cultural change on a large scale. Through in-depth analysis of some key pictures, I will investigate the relation this series of images establishes with the beholder and the role it plays in shaping his visual experience. Emphasis will be placed on 24 closeups of disfigured faces which constitute the last set of this visually driven narrative. As I will seek to demonstrate, the complex array of pictures created by Ernst Friedrich testifies to a fundamental yet still embryonic change in the social perception of photography in the post-WWI Europe.
Political Photomontage: Transformation, Revelation, and Truth
This thesis focuses on how photomontage has been used by certain artists during periods of political unrest and artistic revolution. For the purposes of this study, “photomontage” is defined as any artwork into which a photograph is collaged in order to construct a political narrative. The photograph(s) may come from the mass media, or it can be privately created. This thesis is concerned with more than photomontage as a means of creating overtly political art, however. Specifically, Chapter One provides a general overview of the artwork and writing of the most politically motivated of the Dadas in Berlin, with particular attention to the work of Heartfield. Chapter Two examines the differing styles and goals of Hannah Höch versus the other Berlin Dadas, including Raoul Hausmann, with whom she worked closely from 1915 until 1922. Chapter Three is given to Kurt Schwitters, whose strong opinions about mixing art and politics provide a useful foil to the prevailing attitudes among his fellows. The final chapter considers photomontage as practiced by Martha Rosler in her “Bringing the War Home” works.
“Absence/Presence: The Efficacy of Text, Image and Space at the 1937 Exposition Internationale”
Efficacy/Efficacité. Word & Image Interactions VII, 2011
At the 1937 Exposition Internationale des art et techniques dans la vie moderne in Paris the construction of national identity and the assertion of national prestige, always implicit within framework of the nineteenth century Expositions Universelles, took centre stage. The Nation was packaged as a neat social, economic and political entity for the consumption of an international audience. The aesthetic values of that package, the preference for certain idioms, architectural or otherwise, and the inclusion (or not) of overt political slogans, were all indicative of the style in which individual nations sought to project themselves. The national pavilions in Paris in 1937 then offer many examples of the way in which states, whether democratic or totalitarian, whether to the left or right of the political spectrum, conceived of and orchestrated the interrelations between text, image and space for propagandistic purpose. This paper takes as its focus the use of political symbolism and slogans (or their studied avoidance) within the pavilions of the major totalitarian powers, Germany and the Soviet Union, as well as the contribution of the country in which those nations were then vicariously waging war, namely Spain. The efficacy of each national pavilion in the dissemination of its message and/or the construction of a distinct identity is ultimately considered.
The spectacle of demonstration: the visual representation of political imagination during the coronavirus crisis, 2023
The coronavirus crisis revealed the vulnerability of shared space especially as a space for civic actions. The media, during lockdown and social distancing, become the main channel for maintaining social connections. The present article deals with demonstrations in Israel during the spring and summer of 2020 which sought to overcome policies through visual mediation and the affordances of digital media. The first part focuses on Guy Debord theory as a means of understanding the alienation of people from their everyday life and meaningful political existence. While his forceful argument about the Spectacle was established on television, there are now evident changes as can be traced in the practices of social movements utilizing new media. Images, with enchanting power, were perceived as numbing distancing people from real life; now, they can also act as channels for the political imagination. In addition, the internet and digital culture in general may connect people to political action rather than dissociate them from it. The second part examines photographs from three different demonstrations and shows how political imagination was figured as spectacle and how visual rhetoric mediated the social movements’ reasoning. The first is drawn from the Black Flags movement, established in the face of the chaotic conduct of Israel’s former leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the wake of corruption allegations. The demonstration’s drone documentation, providing imagery taken from above, shows public gatherings grid as a representation of civil order. The second picture is from a Zoom-based demonstration in which a Zoom meeting, an event that enabled under- represented people to participate from their home. The third is from the Balfour demonstrations – a reenactment performance that was staged for the camera as an Instagram image, fashioning an ideal portrait of the protestors and of an idealistic vision of the state. The article uses these examples to demonstrate how the political agendas of the social movements are consolidated via visual technologies.
Dissenting Exhibitions by Artists (1968–1998) Reframing Marxist exhibition legacy’
2012
The goal of this thesis is to look at the critical and dissenting value of exhibitions through the examination of four cases studies, based on six exhibitions taking place between 1968 and 1998 in Latin and North America. The exhibitions belong to the history of modern and contemporary exhibitions and curating, a field of research and study that has only started to be written about in the last two decades. This investigation contributes to it, in its creation of new genealogies by connecting previously overlooked antecedents, or by proposing new relations within established lineages, at the intersection of a specific historiography; to address exhibitions, a tradition of artists acting as curators and an emerging history of curating. The examined exhibitions were put together by artists or artist collectives and were placed in a liminal position between artistic and curatorial practice. All the cases presented a distinct proposal in relation to art and social change, a fact that connects them, in their aims and modus operandi, to a Marxist and neo-Marxist critical and transformative legacy. The cases address the following connections: exhibition as political site (Tucumán Arde, 1968); exhibition as social space (The People’s Choice (Arroz con Mango), 1981); exhibition as encounter (Rooms with a view, We the People, Art/Artifact, 1987-88); and exhibition as an exchange situation (El Museo de la Calle, 1998-2001).
L’exposition How We Are, Photographing Britain en 2007 était la première grande exposition photographique du musée des arts exclusivement britanniques consacré, la Tate Britain. Cette exposition affirmait entre autres, que la photographie britannique contemporaine aux années thatchériennes, assume sa parenté avec la photographie documentaire des années 30. Or la représentation des travailleurs a été au centre du réalisme social au cœur des pratiques documentaires des années 30.. La photographie de la fin des années 80 marquerait en revanche un retrait de la photographie sinon documentaire, du moins de la photographie engagée, passant par « une redéfinition de la photographie en tant qu’art qui réaffirme le pictorialisme sur le réalisme documentaire. »2 La représentation du travailleur allait donc se faire l’écho, d’une forme de rupture au sein de l’histoire de la photographie documentaire. Le point de départ de ce papier s’articule autours de quelques remarques à propos de l’exposition « Here we are », puis analyse les marqueurs de la représentation des travailleurs avant et après le passage à la photographie couleur, dans les différents formats d’expression qui jalonnent la photographie des années 80.