Still Searching…
The conditions governing the digital world have led to a radical diversification not only in photography but also in the theory that underpins it and the history that is written about it. Photographic media and forms are incorporated into complex tech technological, capitalist and ideological networks; the experts who are conducting scholarly research into the role of photographic images thus come from very different disciplines. The expansion of the discourse surrounding these images is also reflected in Still Searching…, the blog on photographic theory that was initiated by Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2012 and which subjects all aspects of photography and its role in visual culture to interdisciplinary scrutiny. The bloggers invited to the online format operate at the forefront of research and enhance our awareness of current issues that are relevant to photography.
25.04. – 30.06.2023
Now Return My Story, and Wipe My Mouth with Bread
i. Kwibuka, the 'remembering'
ii. Babonana, we see each other
Annette Vowinckel | 20.05. – 30.06.2022
Very Long Tables: A First Sounding of Photography of the War in Ukraine.
Photo Politics: Ukraine vs. Russia
Zelensky vs. Putin
Atrocities
Visual Storytelling
The War’s Visual Waif: Loose Ends
Andrew Dewdney | 01.11. – 20.12.2021
Zombie Photography: What Is the Photographic Image Still Doing?
Prologue: The Undead of Photography
Cold Case No. 1. Modernism: Photography in the Morgue
Cold Case No. 2. Heritage, History and the Archive: Photography’s Mausoleum
Cold Case No. 3. Post-photographic Melancholia: Nationalism and Identity
Rhea Storr | 20.07. – 15.10.2021
Black Aesthetic Strategy: Images that Move
By describing a series of aesthetic strategies, I want to consider how the production of an image influences the way it moves, where aesthetics gives agency over circulation. For good reason, images of Black bodies are often examined at the point of consumption, the point at which an image becomes an object. What I will develop instead is an argument for the centrality and manipulation of form at the point of production.
The aesthetic strategies which will be proposed here – redaction, affect, dislocation, construction and errantry – are by no means exhaustive or prescriptive. They are intended as a guide for making, a means for moving which resists the voicing of images on behalf of Black bodies by treating the Black body like a ventriloquist’s dummy… A strategic approach is particularly important to the representation of Black culture, as the voicing of Black bodies is mired in photographic traditions which seek control or to render them invisible. The aesthetic strategies proposed here offer a lexicon to voice images by Black voices with agency in their representation. Not only are they useful for the Black experimental cinema which will be considered in the coming weeks but can be employed by others with a desire to move similarly; image-makers in diaspora, in minority, under oppression or working counter culturally, etc.
And so we move.’
Redaction
Errantry
Dislocation / Relocation
Affect
Construction
Estelle Blaschke | 17.02. – 22.06.2021
Image Capital
In Abundance
Customer Data, Plans, Bonds, Checks, Books, Journals …
The Business of Data Protection
New Data Products
Susanne Huber | 05.08. – 30.09.2020
Snaps from a Queer Angle
Queer perspectives – artistic, academic, activist or otherwise – are gaining increased attention within institutions and public forums engaged in art and (visual) culture. Emerging from a subcultural environment, i.e. often through minority groups and in opposition to prevailing positions in both theory and practice, this momentum is a precarious, at times even contradictory event. Queer discourse poses a substantial challenge to normative structures of the supposedly common, not offering final solutions or relief while being vulnerable to appropriation, commodification, and domestication. This attitude of taking a specific point of view finds an equivalent in the visual form of photography. Through constant artistic or curatorial framing and reframing, however, the medium offers a particular affinity to queer endeavors. Directing the gaze to queer subjects or rendering queer ways of seeing and perceiving thus takes advantage of the inherent qualities of photography as a projective apparatus. This blog series sets out to explore the manifold angles and separate layers by and on which queer leverage might break with the confines of normative frames and perspectives.