Still Searching…

Von 2012 bis 2023 beschäftigte sich der Diskurs-Blog des Fotomuseum Winterthur interdisziplinär mit allen Aspekten der Fotografie und ihrer Rolle in der visuellen Kultur. Die insgesamt fast 50 eingeladenen Blogger_innen von Still Searching…  diskutierten fotografische Medien und Formen als Bestandteil komplexer technologischer, kapitalistischer und ideologischer Netzwerke und verhandelten aktuellste und relevante Fragestellungen rund um die Fotografie.

Index

Blog series: The Status of the Image in Digital Culture

Ingrid Hoelzl, Rémi Marie | 01.03. – 30.04.2016
The Status of the Image in Digital Culture

The current blog series are co-written by image theorists Ingrid Hoelzl and Rémi Marie. Until the end of April, they will reflect on the status of the image in digital culture. They will examine the shift from the humanist to the posthumanist programme of the image, in line with the shift from the geometric paradigm of the image (based on the linear perspective) to the algorithmic paradigm (introduced with digitalization). Hoelzl and Marie will discuss the central idea of their book Softimage (2015), the image as a software, and reflect on the status of the image in the age of autonomous machines – the postimage.

On the Invisible (Image and Algorithm)

Freitag, 18.03.2016
<p>First we want to specify a point concerning the last sentence of our <a href="http://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/articles/27021_image_and_programme">first post</a>. In his “Postscript on the Societies of Control”, published in French in 1990 (that is, a few years before the launch of the first public web browser), Deleuze opposes the old disciplinary societies as analyzed by Foucault to the present societies of control. He writes: </p>
Blog series: Is Photography Over?

Trevor Paglen | 01.03. – 15.04.2014
Is Photography Over?

Starting on March 1, 2014, the American artist, Trevor Paglen, will write about the world of “seeing machines” – from iPhones to facial recognition algorithms to automated military targeting systems – and what they mean in terms of 21st century photography.

Is Photography Over?

Montag, 03.03.2014
<div>A few years ago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held a conference about photography – for a photo conference, it had the odd title “Is Photography Over?.” Curators Sandra Phillips and Dominic Wilsdon posed the question as a challenge to panelists, audience members and the world at large. The two-day symposium was an attempt to shake up conventional institutionalized discourses about photography and to be an opportunity.<br><br></div>

Seeing Machines

Donnerstag, 13.03.2014
<p>In my last blog post, I sketched out some of the ways that traditional photography theory and practice seems to be at a standstill. Contemporary revolutions in photography, from omnipresent digital picture-taking to the advent of hundred-billion image repositories have prompted some practitioners, theorists, and critics to ask whether “photography” (at least as it was once understood) “is over.” I noted that the question has arrived at an ironic time – how could photography be “over” at the exact moment in history that it has achieved an unprecedented ubiquity?</p>

Scripts

Montag, 24.03.2014
<div>In the last post, I proposed that 21st Century “photography” has come to encompass so many different kinds of technologies, imaging apparatuses, and practices that the kinds of things we easily recognize as photography (cameras, film, prints, etc.) now actually constitute an exception to the rule. I proposed a much broader definition – <em>seeing machines</em>. <br><br></div>

Geographies of Photography

Freitag, 11.04.2014
<div>Over the last few weeks I’ve been laying out some ideas about what photography has become, and have begun to articulate some of the ways I use to think about it. In previous posts, I wrote about replacing a more conventional idea of photography with the idea of seeing machines and put forward the idea of “scripts” to begin understanding how seeing machines function, i.e. how they act upon the world. I wrote about scripts as being the range of activities that a seeing machine “wants” to do, and the range of possibilities that those “wants” facilitate, and the range of possibilities that are foreclosed. <br><br></div>
Blog series: Marvin Heiferman

Marvin Heiferman | 01.11. – 15.12.2013
Marvin Heiferman

In his blog series, Marvin Heiferman will take a broad look at the medium as it is changing and being redefined, and consider the issues in and around the medium that are provocative. Rather than understanding photography as a medium in crisis, as some people seem so eager to suggest, Heiferman sees photography in the midst of being re-imagined – this is will be his starting point to look at and talk about over the course of his blogging period. He will use news reports and stories about topical images, events, and issues in visual culture as the basis for taking a weekly look at how photography and our relationship to it are changing. He will link to stories, write about the issues that they raise, and invite readers to take an active role in the discussion. 

Photography, She Said, Makes Me Nervous

Dienstag, 03.12.2013
<div>Decades ago, when I wanted to be a painter and also needed a job, I thought it might be good to get some hands-on art world experience. I went to a number of galleries to inquire if there might be any positions and—in the era before MFA, museum studies, and arts administration programs made that crazily competitive—was hired by Harold Jones, the founding director of LIGHT Gallery, which had recently opened on Madison Avenue. Harold, who had spotted me looking at shows there previously, took a chance, hired me, and in ways I still marvel at, changed the course of my life.<br><br></div>