Still Searching…

From 2012 to 2023, the discursive blog format of Fotomuseum Winterthur subjected all aspects of photography and its role in visual culture to interdisciplinary scrutiny. The approximately 50 bloggers that contributed to Still Searching… discussed photographic media and forms within their complex technological, capitalist and ideological networks and negotiated some of the most pressing and relevant questions surrounding photography.

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)

Friday, 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: Photography and Science

Kelley Wilder | 01.11. – 15.12.2012
Photography and Science

Kelley Wilder will blog on the topic of photography and science:

“What I hope to do over the course of this blog is to turn the conversation away from the art world and toward an area where photographic practices abound. The rich and intertwined histories of photography and science give us access to the voices and opinions of photographic insiders who have been written of as outsiders. The remainder of this blog will continue to look at the confluences and interdependences of photography and science in order to shed light on what some of these shifts might mean for studying and writing about photography.”

Photography and the Invisible

Tuesday, 13.11.2012
<p>For many years, an oft-repeated theme in relation to science photographs has been the revelatory concept of making invisible things visible. Reiterated in exhibition and book titles, the concept has become commonplace without ever submitting to significant scrutiny. It needs scrutiny, however, since scholarship by Edwards, Tucker, Kelsey, Daston, Galison and others have made it very clear that there is much more to photography’'s role in science than as a simple, passive conduit, translating the invisible ‘out there’ to the visible ‘here and now’.</p>

Photographic Practice and Photography

Thursday, 22.11.2012
<p>Since we are following a trajectory in this blog of asking what it might be like to explore photographic history from a look at particular photographic practices, I want to address one of the comments in the last blog here in a whole new thread. In the last blog, Ulla Fischer-Westhauser rightly brought up Marietta Blau and nuclear emulsions. </p>
Blog series: Photographic Realism, an Attempt

Bernd Stiegler | 15.01. – 29.02.2012
Photographic Realism, an Attempt

In his blog series Photographic Realism, an Attempt, Bernd Stiegler will introduce six different aspects of photographic realism over the course of his six-week blogging period. The intention is to explore options beyond familiar theoretical trajectories, such as the indexical nature of photography or photography as social documentary. At first glance, these will perhaps seem quite removed from the fundamental question of realism. Each concept is one perspective among many and is definitely intended as a more or less provocative thesis. At second glance, each has the potential — this is the central hypothesis — to open up a wide field of theoretical questions and related topics. Each is an invitation to discuss.

Invisibility

Monday, 20.02.2012
<p>Perhaps photographs stemming from worlds invisible to the human eye are precisely those that we tend to perceive as real. The realm of the unseen is often the most “real.” It is a sphere that we endow with such trust due to the appearance of its images, that we not only allow ourselves to be guided by such photographs but we also use them to make consequential decisions.</p>