A density of texture: reading photography from South, North and West Africa (original) (raw)
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56th MESA ANNUAL MEETING, 2022
A presentation in the occasion of the 56th MESA Annual Meeting, 1-4 December 2022, Denver, Colorado. Session XI-18: Visual Arts, and Images of Nationhood, Legacy, and Memory Chair: Sadam Issa, Michigan State University Presenters: Insia Malik, CUNY Graduate Center, “The Transnational Vocal Talent Competition Arab Idol and the Construction of Arabness”; Liat Berdugo, University of San Francisco, “A Tree in Palestine: A photographic view of afforestation as a tool for colonization and control”; Faezeh Faezipour, University of Arizona, “Legacy and Memory: Portraits of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution Leaders”; Elisa Pierandrei, Independent Scholar, “Photography and Cultural Heritage: How the Van-Leo Collection Captured the Surreal Majesty of Cairo”; Chelsea Haines, Arizona State University, “Gershon Knispel’s Transatlantic Solidarities”; Suzy Halajian, UC Santa Cruz, “Reimagining Narratives of Crisis: Contemporary Art and Speculative Politics.”
I Am Here, on the photographic work of Patricia Morosan
(I) Remember Europe', Patricia Morosan photographic catalogue, Fotohof edition Berlin, 2018
On the photographic work of Patricia Morosan EVERY PHOTOGRAPHIC ACT registers a centre: the self of the photographing body (the camera/ the photographer himself) places itself in a middle, from which it captures the black hole of the infinite 'here and now'. The absolute singularity of the machine's position in relation to reality is nevertheless not static: it is rapid, in movement, capturing at once a mechanical and psychic dynamics. 'What we photograph is precisely the instant in which we take the photo. It is obvious that this is what we photograph. All the rest, of which taking a beautiful photo consist of, is extremely secondary in relation to the real of the photographic instant. (...) We photograph what we have seen, so we photograph ourselves. We place ourselves in a situation and from a certain point of view. (…) What we photograph is the fact that we take a photo.' 1 (Roche 77) Seen in this way, the photographic act enacts the photographer in a place as a centre. Patricia Morosan's project Remember Europe-From The Middles is itself a search for the invisible centre: at once a geographical centre in the shifting sands of Europe and an interior centre-the 'here and now' of experience. In fact the entire project is based on a paradox: photographing what is not. As the borders of Europe change with the unfording of history, its centre is constantly de-placed, measuring the perpetual movement of Europe's policy of inclusion-exclusion. Chasing a non-existent centre, Patricia Morosan photographs it, in order to see it. Denis Roche considers that making visible is one of the essential functions of photography: 'Fixing a place through the capturing machine which is the camera (...) multiplies the visibility of the monument (...) We register through the camera in the fraction of an instant a mass of detailed information which is more complex than registering the place without the machine. (Roche 85).
“The Reality of (Photographs of) Abstraction”
Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture, 2020
Almost every art historian, in coming face-to-face with an artwork they have previously seen only in reproduction, has had the startling realization that the physical piece differs significantly from what they had imagined. I distinctly remember having this experience when I first saw Planos em superfície modulada no. , a white monochromatic painting by Brazilian artist Lygia Clark from . In , during a visit to the São Paulo collector Adolpho Leirner's apartment, I noticed the painting on the wall, which I had only ever seen in reproduction (Figure ). As I slowly approached, and the composition came into focus, I realized that the five black lines dissecting the white picture plane had not been drawn or painted, as I had previously assumed, but were negative space; they were hollow veins, mere millimeters wide and deep, between four wooden panels that had been glued to a larger rectangular board (Figures -). Clark created the illusion of lines, not by making marks on the support, but by leaving space untouched. The artwork was something entirely different than what I had presumed, and it caused me to reevaluate what I thought I knew about Lygia Clark specifically, and geometric abstraction more broadly.
UPDATED Introduction to Imaging Pilgrimage: Art As Embodied Experience (PB version 2023)
Imaging Pilgrimage: Art As Embodied Experience, 2023
While place-based pilgrimage is an embodied practice, can it be experienced in its fullness through built environments, assemblages of souvenirs, and music? Imaging Pilgrimage explores contemporary art that is created after a pilgrimage and intended to act as a catalyst for the embodied experience of others. Each chapter focuses on a contemporary artwork that links one landscape to another-from the Spanish Camino to a backyard in the Pacific Northwest, from Lourdes to South Africa, from Jerusalem to England, and from Ecuador to California. The close attention to context and experience allows for popular practices like the making of third-class or "contact" relics to augment conversations about the authenticity or perceived power of a replica or copy; it also challenges the tendency to think of the “original” in hierarchical terms. The book brings various fields into conversation by offering a number of lenses and theoretical approaches (materialist, kinesthetic, haptic, synesthetic) that engage objects as radical sites of encounter, activated through religious and ritual praxis, and negotiated with not just the eyes, but a multiplicity of senses. The first full-length study to engage contemporary art that has emerged out of the embodied experience of pilgrimage, Imaging Pilgrimage is an important and timely addition to the field of material and visual culture of religion. It is essential reading for anyone interested in pilgrimage studies, material culture, and the place of religion within contemporary art.
Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material Bulletin , 2019
In this paper, Cognitive Archaeology’s Material Engagement Theory is engaged as a means to consider some of the current material interests and the social dimension of contemporary photographic practice in relation to photo-graphic archives. First the social fabric at the foundation of the John Marshall Photographic Collection and the research methods and working practices of its founder are described. Then, three contemporary photo-mediated artworks, whose inception lies with archival material from the John Marshall Photographic Collection held at The British School at Rome, are discussed through a framework of MET’s three working hypotheses. These are the hypothesis of the extended mind, the hypothesis of enactive signification, and the hypothesis of material agency. By drawing together the current material and social interests of contemporary photographic practice with MET, in specific relation to archival photographic material, this paper aims to shed new light on some of the diverse ways in which contemporary photographic practitioners are engaging with photographic archives. Presented here is a preliminary introduction of contemporary photographic practice to the practical applications of MET’s three working hypotheses, so that those in the field of cultural materials conservation may be able to consider its application in their own practice-based activity and discourse.