History and Theory of Photography Research Papers (original) (raw)

- by and +1
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- Japanese Studies, Visual Studies, Art History, Chinese Studies

Review of the exhibition "About life in the countryside" at Kunsthaus Wien, where I discuss the gap separating art photography and photography in the photo world, arguing that the latter often has a less complicated relationship with the real. I call for an end of photography in the Ernst and Hilla Becher (aka Düsseldorf school) style.
Intro: “Is it photography, is it art, or is it both?” is a question I don’t often ask myself, but it seems that the difference matters, at least socially. The art world travels to Venice, the photo world goes to Arles. Star photographers like Cristina de Middel, who triggered the self-published photobook boom, are nearly unknown among artists, while artists such as Gillian Wearing are equally remote for photographers. Even though there are artists whose work is appreciated in both worlds, like Hilla and Bernd Becher, Andres Serrano, Nan Goldin, Candida Höfer, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Demand, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, photography has its own festivals, galleries, magazines, masterclasses, stars, prizes, and criteria that have little to no crossover with the art world."
Conclusion: "While building a photographic archive of people and/or their environment in the tradition of the Bechers is still a worthwhile endeavour in documentary terms, its artistic potential has been exhausted. When so many politicians try to convey simplistic images of the world, we need the subversion of stereotypes, not their confirmation. In a world of “alternative facts”, photography is at its best when it tries to develop more complicated relationships with the real."

- by Klaus Speidel
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- Photography, Contemporary Art, Photography Theory, Fine Art Photography

In the opening lines of the Beach Boys 1964 hit, “In My Room,” Brian Wilson portrays the bedroom and domestic space in general as a place of retreat and security, a world that one can “tell their secrets to.” Yet, as the narrator confesses to a growing feeling of fragility in this relation, the cavernous soundtrack comes to introduce an unnerving openness that belies this sense of safe enclosure. This testimonial to isolation and its celebration of interiority is additionally compromised by a complex overlay of harmonies which render the individual voice strangely multiple. In these dynamics, the song dramatizes the transformation of the home that would occur under Postmodernism as a once discrete and private space would be shot through with its exterior. While the historical forces behind this transformation are multiple, the most prominent include: the increasing ubiquity and reach of media, the explosion of postwar advertising, the birth of suburbia and the “always on call” employment model of late capitalism. As the convergence point for these forces, the home in the second half of the 20th century came to relinquish its enduring historical function which Gaston Bachelard describes as “shelter[ing] day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
This transformation of the home is at the center of the work of photographers John Divola, Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall. While the specific strategies vary between artists, collectively their work visualizes these tensions by presenting the home as somehow uninhabitable, both literally and figuratively speaking. In these images, the expectation of sanctuary that Wilson and Bachelard describe clash violently with the forces of late capitalism described above, fueling a self-reflexive dialogue in which the operation of the camera is rendered complicit in the larger processes of defamiliarization and alienation in which the home is enmeshed. For example, John Divola surreptitiously enters abandoned seaside homes in Southern California. Chronicling his presence through flares and light anomalies, the photographer introduces a tension between the constructedness of the image, the unwanted presence of the photographer and the decay and degradation of the spaces in which these acts take place. Similarly, Gregory Crewdson creates elaborate, excessively theatrical images of the home which question the association of the domestic with the authenticity and interiority. Finally, Jeff Wall’s portrayal of the home reveals an intrusion of the world of images into the domestic sphere by self-consciously fashioning the drama of the home according to overwrought types and conventions. In these works, the image of the home emerges as a space of alienation, but also as the center point for the convergence of historical and technical forces which would shape subjectivity and the politics of the image.

- by Thomas Stubblefield
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- Suburban Studies, Gaston Bachelard, Postmodernism, Domestic Space

On the occasion of the 2020 exhibition "LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography," this essay reevaluates longstanding myths about "the photo essay at life" while tracing how and by whom the magazine's varied photo features were... more

- by Nadya Bair
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- American History, Print Culture, Documentary Photography, History of photography

PhotoResearcher No. 37 is the first publication in recent times to investigate the rich material-scientific-political uses of three-colour photography at the turn of the last century. It maps the shifting expressions of its technologies, tracing the various expeditions during which it was deployed, the neighbouring disciplines it serviced,
and problematizing its imperial entanglements. It does so on a larger scale than what is often afforded this medium, connecting countries through three-colour practices.

Recensione sulla seconda edizione di Foto/Industria, Biennale di fotografia industriale promossa dal Mast di Bologna

- by Claudia D'Angelo
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- Photography, Contemporary Art, Postproduction, History and Theory of Photography

Der österreichische Photochemiker und -historiker Josef Maria Eder (1855-1944) verkörpert in mancher Hinsicht die Summe der photographischen Kultur des 19. Jahrhunderts. Er wird in "Photographie als Wissenschaft" mit eigenen programmatischen Texten sowie Beiträgen seiner Zeitgenossen vorgestellt, die seine Position als Schulgründer, sein Verhältnis zur Idee der Photographie als Kunst und sein Konzept der Geschichte der Photographie beleuchten. Im Zentrum steht dabei die nach Eders Entwurf 1888 eröffnete "K. k. Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt für Photographie und Reproductionsverfahren", die ein äußerst breit gefächertes Spektrum von Aus- und Weiterbildungsmöglichkeiten für Hochschulstudenten wie Lehrlinge, Amateure und Professoren ebenso wie für Angestellte photographischer und druckgraphischer Betriebe bieten sollte. Als weit über Österreich hinaus beachtete Institution von enzyklopädischer Perspektive war sie die Plattform, von der aus Eder Wien um 1900 als Zentrum der wissenschaftlichen Photographie und anderer moderner Bildtechnologien etablierte.

The origins of modern photojournalism in Germany, during the yeas 1925-1933, is the central object of this dissertation. Checking popular illustrated magazines, such as Berlliner Illustrirte Zeitung, and their contemporary critics, one seeks to know if could understand them with a notion of “aesthetic of transparency”. In order to arrive at the empirical research, some notions about the modern and modernity were delineated, hoping to understand the cultural processes and regimes of visuality of the beginning of 1920s as its unfolding, as well as starting from some reflections of Charles Baudelaire to think the aesthetic experience of modernity and its relation with photography. In addition, it was tried to understand if a dialogue between realism and modernisms could be possible, within the German context. The Weimar Republic was thought of as a democratic space for political, economic and social rearticulation, in which photography would have been articulated by the artistic field such as Neues Sehen (New Vision), by Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, and Neue Sachlichkeit Objectivity), by Albert Renger-Patzsch, exerting on the photographic production in journalism some of its conditions for its modernization. Finally, it was reflected on the modernization of the photojournalism in the Weimar Republic from the illustrated magazines study, based on the use of the photographic series potentially narrating journalistic facts, mainly from some photographs of Erich Salomon and Felix H. Man. This study allowed us to verify that the ripening of photojournalism met a demand of the German reading public for facts, reinforcing a certain professional ideology of objectivity. Having been possible by the coincidence of relations, as photographers willing to produce many images of various aesthetic forms under a diversity of conditions, allied to the freedom of editorial power and its experimentation, besides the rising of photographic agencies that began to order photographic work with the written report.

- by Douglas F Romão
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- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Communication, Journalism
- by Stefanie Klamm and +1
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- History and Theory of Photography
- by Cristian Graure
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- Visual Studies, Art History, Art Theory, Photography

Starting from a discussion of Chris Marker's "La Jetée" and Terry Gilliam's "12 Monkeys", I introduce the problem of the truth-value accredited to photographic images known as the documentary paradigm. I maintain that the mainstream philosophy of photography has been able to build and defend that paradigm via the ideological exclusion of an enormous amount of possible photographs. The recent achievements of automated generative imaging oblige a retrospective comparative analysis. This essay introduces two new concepts: "digigraphy" and "photosimile." I propose to name digigraphy those digital pictures produced by a computer without the need of an optical apparatus – still necessary for digital photography – and characterized by the steadiness of production (comparable to the "shot"), reproduction, and diffusion. The creation of a digigraph does not imply the operations of an expert; rather, digigraphy is deemed to become a medium even more accessible and widespread than digital photography. I introduce the concept of photosimile to identify those digigraphs, which are, for the human eye, indistinguishable from a photograph or a digital photograph. I continue forecasting a split into the human use of photographic images: on the one hand, the documentary value will remain crucial for the automated operations of machine vision such as data mining, management, and control. On the other, the communicative and expressive values of photographic images will survive into the new form of digigraphy.

- by Giacomo Mercuriali
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- Aesthetics, Media Studies, Hyperreality, Philosophy of Photography
- by Érika Wicky
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- Art History, Photography, Photography Theory, History of photography

This paper analyses the work of Australian artist, Peter Kennedy. It considers his early work at Inhibodress artists' space in Sydney and works presented up until the major installation series 'Chorus from the Breath of Wings' at the... more

- by Anne Marsh
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- Photography, Contemporary Art, Performance Art, Experimental Arts

Tekst był publikowany w: „Kultura Współczesna” 2016, nr 4.

This text reviews and discusses the retrospective exhibition of the late Nathan Lyons (1930-2016) at the George Eastman House (January-June 2019). The show was originally conceived with Nathan Lyons as an exhibition of his then current work in color. Following his death, it became a half retrospective with the issues that such a change in purpose may raise for the curators. This review describes and analyzes the resulting choices from the point of view of one who had known Nathan Lyons (a former assistant director of the George Eastman House, the founder of Visual Studies Workshop and a co-founder of the Society for Photographic Education) personally for nearly thirty years.

- by Bruno Chalifour
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- Visual Studies, Photography, American Photography, History of photography
- by Jae Emerling
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- Gilles Deleuze, Photography Theory, Walker Evans, History and Theory of Photography

Jeff Wall's photographs are analyzed in relationship to feminist art theory.

- by Leah Modigliani
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- Photography, Contemporary Art, Photography (Visual Studies), Feminist Art History

For a long time, the study of photography has been a part of Art studies or a mere object of philosophical investigations. Yet, after the advent of digital technologies it progressively became central in Media and Communication studies. From the 2000s onwards, various social and technological events made photography more accessible, ubiquitous, public, cheap, democratic, immediate and shared than ever before, paving the way to a renewal of photographic experience. New objects, formats, devices, practices and uses emerged as specific traits of a ‘performative’ photographic agency. This emergence is allowed by the fact that photography, despite being one of the most ancient media, still shapes our lives, empowers our biological vision, and enhances our imaginative visual practices. The editors of this issue, Adriano D’Aloia and Francesco Parisi, propose the term ‘snapshot culture’ to refer to the combination of technological, aesthetic and practical shifts in contemporary photographic experience. Snapshot culture is characterized by a twofold dynamic: the persistence of the original traits of the photographic experience as it emerged and developed, coupled with the modulation of new opportunities offered by technological improvements and social changes. Indeed, the digitalization of photographic aesthetics and related media practices provides an ideal case for studying some of the most challenging developments in visual media aesthetics within the broader landscape of the post-medium condition and for reflecting on how photography theory has responded to such challenges in the post-theory era. This special issue offers a critical investigation of photography’s ‘persistence’ in the media experience through both an analysis of concrete objects and phenomena (e.g. selfies, animated GIFs, social networking, computational photography) and the refinement of theoretical approaches to photography.

- by Adriano D'Aloia and +1
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- Media Studies, Photography, Digital Photography, Social Networking

Este trabalho olha American Photographs à luz, simultaneamente, de uma visão da fotografia como instrumento de verdade e objetividade e como denúncia dessa ideia.
Explora a forma como Evans consegue, ao mesmo tempo, trabalhar dentro dessa linguagem de verdade e objetividade, e quebrá-la e denunciá-la pela sua própria prática, assumindo o caráter subjetivo das suas escolhas e da sua edição.

Both Eadweard Muybridge's and Étienne-Jules Marey's chronophotographic studies of the human body were undertaken as a purportedly scientific means of analysing movement. The perceived objectivity of these embodied representations of movement was effectively upheld by the supposed impartiality instituted by the camera. In recent years, many scholars have offered alternative readings of these photographs. One key aspect often highlighted is the encoding of gender, particularly evident in Muybridge's chronophotographs. However, rather than addressing the subject of these photographs-namely, movement-scholars tend to analyse the gendering of the body itself. On the other hand, given that in Marey's chronophotographs the corporeal body itself vanishes into an abstract pattern, the question of gender has been altogether neglected. This thesis follows from such scholarship that challenges the presumed objectivity of such studies, arguing that both Muybridge and Marey’s photographs evince the gendering of movement itself. By visually analysing these photographs in relation to the tradition of the nude, this comparative analysis highlights the way in which the gendered codes that historically informed artistic representations of the human body are echoed in the work of both chronophotographers. Moreover, it takes into account the circulation of the photographs within wider socio-cultural currents centered on the body in the late nineteenth century, and subsequently considers the broader historical ramifications of these projects. This thesis is therefore exemplary of revisionary approaches within the history of photography, and art historical scholarship more broadly.

- by Savannah Smith
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- Gender Studies, Photography, History of Art, History of photography
- by Luke Gartlan
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- Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Art History, Humanities

https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/552600 — Monochrome photographs are now commonly referred to as being “in black and white,” but before photographing “in color” became common, from the mid-1930s, a vibrant chromatic culture existed in photography. Scholarly interest in print color as a cultural phenomenon, however, has been very limited and historicization of its vocabulary inexistent. This text addresses the disjunction between the colors of early photographs on paper and the way they are described today. It evaluates what colors “black-and-white” photographs actually were and how the photographic community engaged with the issue of print coloration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a close analysis of the vocabulary used to describe and categorize color (or its perceived absence) in photography, print coloration and its lexicon emerge as meaningful, interdependent artifacts for understanding how individuals used an unprecedentedly mechanical image-making...

- by Ayelet Zohar
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- Japanese Studies, Photography, Japanese Language And Culture, History of Japan

When is the negotiation of being seen in front of the lens a civic act? Dawoud Bey has consciously grappled with this foundational question for decades. His landmark work offers us invaluable models of what this negotiation requires of a photographer’s relationships with his or her subjects and community and with the field of photographic styles that might complicate the ethics of this endeavor, particularly for black subjects.

- by Sarah Lewis
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- Art History, Photography, Contemporary Art, Social Justice

Projet de post-doctorat présenté dans le cadre du Labex Création, Arts et Patrimoines

- by Barbara Wittmann
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- Art History, Textiles, History of Textiles, Cultural History Of Ghosts

The World Wide Web is like a daily photo fair. Those who wish to expose themselves to an abundance of photographs can do so day-to-day, provided they have the tools to connect with this electronic universe. But the photographs encountered here are often, if not always, defined by the nature of reproduction: the possibility of endless modification, appropriation, copying and the ease of sharing. What happens to authorship and the singularity of the photographic image in this hyper-mediated world in which old categories have started to slide into each other?

- by Taco Hidde Bakker
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- Photography, Performance Art, Photography Theory, Sculpture

This paper will use a corpus of photographs that were reproduced on the pages of specialized photography magazines published during the interwar period to examine common display practices with a problem focus on gender and class positions of the photographers and the photographed, and the relation between sociability and power. By making interdisciplinary connections between perspectives, insights and
approaches from art history, ethnology and cultural anthropology, the paper will contribute to the reappraisal of the “naturalness” of gender and class positions in a society. Out of all the photographs published in photography magazines, we chose those—about 350 photographs published between 1927 and 1941—that show the human figure, and our examination implied the abandoning the classical interpretive apparatus,
aesthetic evaluations and reliance on the usual historical and artistic interpretations of these and similar images. The method used to analyze the depicted characters and situations relied on the analysis of the content, or more precisely on the image inventory, according to the frequency of individual motifs. The main aspects considered in selecting the photographs include representation according to occupation, ways
of spending leisure time and emotions exhibited by characters, as well as the objects that surround them, their posture, actions they are engaged in, space in which they are located, age structure, etc. This method resulted in a complex understanding of dominant representation practices and patterns, as well as the presumed social asymmetries, and revealed how
photography of that time expressed, reflected, encouraged and perpetuated stereotyping of certain social groups.

- by Ana Separovic
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- Art History, Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology, History and Theory of Photography
- by Burcu Dogramaci
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- Art History, Book History, Urban Studies, Modernism

This research explores the relationship between photojournalism and the American Civil War. The Brady Gallery’s images of Antietam are an important milestone in this narrative, but it is a story ultimately embedded within the earliest history of photography. The ability to permanently affix an image, first upon silver treated glass through the daguerreotype process and later upon photographically-sensitized paper, had existed for scarcely two decades at the onset of the war. In that time, photography grew quickly from a scientific novelty, to a luxury afforded primarily to the elite, and eventually to a mass medium with wide public appeal. With growing public interest came growing economic investment, and to meet demand the medium diversified beyond studio portraits to include cartes-de-visite of celebrity figures and stereographs of landscapes, architecture, and battlefields. Alongside such technological developments the philosophical understanding of photography developed as well, progressing from a narrative that emphasized the photograph as a product of nature or the sun toward a narrative that idealized photographers as artists deserving of moral and legal rights in their work. These technological and intellectual developments in the early history of photography have important implications for the emergence of photojournalism that have not yet been fully explored.

- by Jason Lee Guthrie
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- History, Photography, Civil War, Photojournalism

Sellit est le nom d'un groupe de photographes bretons qui a publié dans les années 70-80 plusieurs monographies consacrées aux îles du Ponant (Ouessant, Batz, Groix…). Pour citer cet article : REVUE DES SCIENCES HUMAINES -N°319... more

Sellit est le nom d'un groupe de photographes bretons qui a publié dans les années 70-80 plusieurs monographies consacrées aux îles du Ponant (Ouessant, Batz, Groix…).
Pour citer cet article :
REVUE DES SCIENCES HUMAINES -N°319 -JUILLET-SEPTEMBRE 2015, Espaces phototextuels, Septentrion, p. 69-82.

"Emerling has done the near impossible: he has written an introduction to the history and theory of photography that also adds significantly to the ways in which we come to see, know, and understand the world. Here, by focusing on the 'and' between history and theory, photography itself becomes ingeniously a way to generate new worlds politically and aesthetically. Emerling writes that 'to study the history and theory of photography is to write and create alongside and in the middle of images.' He couldn't be more right."
--Marquard Smith, Founding Editor, Journal of Visual Culture

- by Jae Emerling
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- History and Theory of Photography

Für eine Philosophy of Caixa Preta Analyse textuelle critique des différentes versions du livre de Vilém Flusser "Pour une Philosophie de la Photographie" écrit par lui en allemand, en anglais et en portugais et petite histoire de ses... more

Für eine Philosophy of Caixa Preta
Analyse textuelle critique des différentes versions du livre de Vilém Flusser "Pour une Philosophie de la Photographie" écrit par lui en allemand, en anglais et en portugais
et petite histoire de ses éditions et traductions dans 22 langues

- by Marc Lenot
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- Photography, Photography Theory, Philosophy of Photography, Vilem Flusser

A major reassessment of photography's pivotal role in 1960s conceptual art Why do we continue to look to photographs for evidence despite our awareness of photography's potential for duplicity? Documents of Doubt critically reassesses the truth claims surrounding photographs by looking at how conceptual artists creatively undermined them. Studying the unique relationship between photography and conceptual art practices in the United States during the social and political instability of the late 1960s, Heather Diack offers vital new perspectives on our "post-truth" world and the importance of suspending easy conclusions in contemporary art. Considering the work of four leading conceptual artists of the 1960s and '70s, Diack looks at photographs as documents of doubt, pushing the form beyond commonly assumed limits. Through in-depth and thorough reevaluations of early work by noted artists Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman, Douglas Huebler, and John Baldessari, Diack advances the powerful thesis that photography provided a means of moving away from the object and toward performative effects, playing a crucial role in the development of conceptual art as a medium of doubt and contingency. Discussing how unexpected and contradictory meanings can exist in the guise of ordinary pictures, Documents of Doubt offers evocative and original ideas on truth's connection to photography in the United States during the late 1960s and how conceptual art from that period anticipated our current era of "alternative facts" in contemporary politics and culture.

- by Heather Diack
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- Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Art History, Media Studies

Über die Fotografie wurde immer schon geschrieben. Das Nachdenken und Schreiben über Fotografie hatte stets einen vielsprachigen, internationalen Charakter, fand also im Plural statt. Aus diesem Grund lässt dieses Heft eine Reihe wichtiger Autorinnen und Autoren im O-Ton zu Wort kommen. ln Interviews und Fragebögen erzählen sie, wie sich ihr Blick auf die Fotografie geformt und verändert hat. Sie berichten, wie – je nach Interessenslagen und gesellschaftlichen Konjunkturen – unterschiedliche Fotografen, Entwicklungen und Epochen in den Blick der Forschung gerieten oder wieder aus dem Blickfeld verschwanden. Sie erzählen, wie Thesen diskutiert, kritisiert und oft auch wieder verworfen wurden. Die Summe all dieser unterschiedlichen Stimmen vermittelt einen lebendigen, autobiografisch gefärbten Einblick in die Werkstatt der Fotografiegeschichte.

- by Steffen Siegel and +1
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- Visual Studies, Art History, Media Studies, New Media

“Nothing came easy,” Gordon Parks, remarked in his 1990 autobiography, Voice in the Mirror, looking back a long and winding road that had turned the High School drop-out at age fifteen into an accomplished photographer, writer, and film... more

- by Andreas Hübner
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- Art History, Photography, African American History, History of photography
- by Patrick R Crowley
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- Classical Archaeology, Art History, Media Archaeology, Historiography