Cahier #01. The Photographic Image in Print (original) (raw)

2009, Cahier #01. The Photographic Image in Print

Since the early nineties a growing number of theoreticians have become more sensible to the different material, cultural, social and aesthetic contexts in which photographic images appear and which help constitute their meanings. As a result several new fields of investigation have come into being. One such field of inquiry looks at the way photographic images are employed within the concrete context of the photographic book and the illustrated magazine. In the last two decades studies on this topic have flourished — some more ambitious than oth- ers—,1 various international colloquia and symposia2 have been organized and impressive exhibitions3 staged to capture the far-reaching implications for the production, distribution and interpretation of photographic images by this new material support. One of the consequences of being a component of a book or illustrated mag- azine is that the photographic image becomes part of a complex system in which different actors play a part. The photographic image immediately loses its auton- omy: set out in a particular way, it is brought into contact with other images (not necessarily photographic) and different kinds of text (introductory remarks, cap- tions, comments, descriptions,...). More than any other book, the photobook is of a heterogeneous nature. Rather than formulating a general theory of the photographic book, the authors of this volume aim to describe the complex relationships that evolve out of this concerted effort of photographer, publisher, author and book designer. In their analysis of specific photobooks, several topics are addressed: how typographers and typography in general influenced the development of the photographic book as a modern medium and consequently photography itself, how editors, photog- raphers and writers used the photobook as an experimental space where words and images were welded together in ever new constellations, how the illustrated magazine as a new channel of distribution changed the formal language of at least one modern photographer, how broader societal changes are prefigured by means of the interplay of text and image, etc. Taken together these texts present myriad ways of dealing with the complex construction that is the photographic book and as such testify to the vitality of this field of photographic studies. Although the combination of the two media, one old (the printing press) and one new (photography), has a long history — even dating back to William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the early inventors of photography — the real merger took place in the late twenties and early thirties of the twentieth century when the develop- ment of new and better printing techniques (the introduction of the heliogravure for instance) and the establishment of massive press conglomerates churning out newspapers and magazines on an industrial scale, laid the foundation for a symbiotic relationship between the printing press and photography. Together they created a whole new environment where the photographic image could prosper. It seems appropriate, therefore, to devote this volume to a study of the defining moment in the coming of age of the photobook during the interwar years.