The photographic surface is the pivotal carrier of information – be it the mediated image or material indications about the object. It is presented here as the entrance into the study of... Show moreThe photographic surface is the pivotal carrier of information – be it the mediated image or material indications about the object. It is presented here as the entrance into the study of photographic materiality that unfolds in a profound scanning of a photograph’s multi-layered dimensionality and of all the interactions that (can) take place in its lifetime – ranging from human to molecular. The chosen case studies are photoworks (hybrid photographic works of art) that are partially overpainted and show (first) signs of degrading photographic material. The different (material) properties of the two interacting media with their distinct surfaces pose challenging questions on a representational, chemical, conservational as well as a theoretical level. The key concern is: How does the photographic surface act in hybrid photoworks as interface between substances and their surrounding space? By panning back and forth between material, technical, and theoretical studies and the case studies – Tacita Dean’s (*1965) Crowhurst II (2007), and two photoworks by Ger van Elk (1941-2014): Dutch Grey (1983/84) and Russian Diplomacy’s (1974) – I follow the methodological path of a multi-angled analysis of photoworks in order to respond to their hybrid nature and to think with their materiality and subject matter. The result is an in-depth theoretical investigation of the photographic surface as interface between substances and spaces within photoworks in particular, and ontologically in any chemically created photograph. It ties together philosophical, esthetical, technical and ethical point of views and therewith creates a deep understanding of photographic materiality at the verge of digital dominance. Show less
Since its very conception, the medium of photography has been registering the unfolding of time and space in the urban space. The thinkers of photography, however, not always had the same stance on... Show moreSince its very conception, the medium of photography has been registering the unfolding of time and space in the urban space. The thinkers of photography, however, not always had the same stance on how this spatiotemporal representation is conceived by the photographer and perceived by the spectator. In his well-commended photographic exhibition, called Metropolis (2016), Dutch photographer Martin Roemers has captured the quintessential time and space of diverse metropolises across the globe. Revitalizing the age-old photographic technique of long-exposure, his aim was to challenge the putative representation of time and space as being forever fixed in the frame. By focusing on the Metropolis photo series, this article examines how Martin Roemers’s use of long-exposure accounts for a paradoxical embodiment of time and space in the city. To this end, it first explores how theoreticians of photography, such as John Szarkowski, Geoffrey Batchen, and Roland Barthes, have pondered on the representation of time with respect to long-exposure. Next, by discussing the work of André Bazin and Christian Metz, it discusses how long-exposure can reveal and register a segment of the city space. Finally, by drawing on Walter Benjamin’s concept of “optical unconscious” and Michel de Certeau’s idea of “lived space”, this article proposes that Roemers’s photographs have manifested the spatiotemporal city: a simultaneously transient and fixed, still and moving, thus ephemeral yet eternal urban environment. Show less
The affinity between photography and memory is rather axiomatic: We take photos to preserve our memories. This formulation considers photographs as aide-mémoire and photography as a mnemotechnique.... Show moreThe affinity between photography and memory is rather axiomatic: We take photos to preserve our memories. This formulation considers photographs as aide-mémoire and photography as a mnemotechnique. Such a basic analogy, however, falls short in explaining the spatiotemporality and materiality of photography and overlooks the mediated aspects of memory in narrating the past. The difficulty with describing the conjunction of memory and photography lies in the fact that neither of them has a static essence: Both remembering and photography are inherently dynamic processes. While for some the photograph simply is a representational image that embodies past events, for others the photograph’s materiality and social uses are equally crucial in the way it continually reshapes our memories. In addition, debates on “prosthetic memory,” “postmemory,” and trauma have already shown how photography plays a role in the disembodied, transgenerational, and retroactive operations of memory work. To classify diverse approaches toward memory and photography without ignoring the dynamic aspects of either of them, this entry is divided into two parts: “conceiving photography through memory” and “perceiving memory through photography.” While the first section explains how the medium of photography has been historically defined via its approaches to memory and remembrance, the second section shows how some salient views on memory are largely founded on photographic lexicons and metaphors. Among others, the first part draws on the work of thinkers such as Siegfried Kracauer, Roland Barthes, and Elizabeth Edwards, and the second part discusses the work of Sigmund Freud, Marianne Hirsch, and Ulrich Baer. Show less
The article investigates urban gardening in Turin with ethnography, historical analysis and photography, using both the authors’ photography and sources from social media and private archives. The... Show moreThe article investigates urban gardening in Turin with ethnography, historical analysis and photography, using both the authors’ photography and sources from social media and private archives. The authors collaborate to analyse ‘community’ gardening through a critical anthropological perspective which centres on the hegemonic power of aesthetic assumptions about the urban green. As a post-industrial, multicultural city, Turin illuminates the dialectic of gentrification vis-à-vis socioeconomic and cultural diversity, which is a crucial dynamic of many urban renewal trends towards ‘green cities’. We highlight the homogeneity of an aesthetic regime vis-à-vis the diversity of ‘skilled visions’ of social actors and its restraining effects on participatory governance. We contribute to ongoing debates in urban anthropology and visual studies, concerned with urban regeneration agendas in the de-industrializing cities of the Global North. Show less
Is it ethical to freely redistribute photographs taken in colonial contexts, historically and today? Showing the complexities behind this question, this study looks at how a vast media network... Show moreIs it ethical to freely redistribute photographs taken in colonial contexts, historically and today? Showing the complexities behind this question, this study looks at how a vast media network evolved around the commercial photographic studio at Mariannhill Monastery and the mission station Centocow in South Africa from the 1880s until today. Taking a grass-roots perspective, it argues that photographs produced by missionaries, like all colonial photographs, must be studied by considering their interconnectedness: first, their alliances with other media, like paintings, theatre plays, tableaux vivants, maps, films, exhibitions, and “ethnographic” objects; second, the exhibitionary complex they depend on, involving museums, libraries, archives, and printing presses; and finally the lobbies, journals, printed instructions, discourses, and interpretive communities that produced, used, and consumed them. Eventually, the study turns to the crucial question how photographs act on and as subjects. Few colonial photographs have left sufficient traces that allow to write their biographies. Mariannhill’s photographs, however, due to their aesthetic aspiration and the congregation’s unique setup, have successfully taken root in many places, moments, and discourses. To show the photographs’ ongoing relevance for stakeholders in both South Africa and Europe, and possible ways of dealing with them today, this study follows their intermediary role over time and in between other images, spaces, objects, and subjects. Show less
In Luganda, the widest spoken minority language in Uganda, the word for photographs is 'ebifananyi'. However, 'ebifananyi' does not, contrary to the etymology of the word photographs, relate to... Show moreIn Luganda, the widest spoken minority language in Uganda, the word for photographs is 'ebifananyi'. However, 'ebifananyi' does not, contrary to the etymology of the word photographs, relate to light writings. 'Ebifananyi' instead means things that look like something else. 'Ebifananyi' are likenesses. My research project explores the historical context of this particular conceptualisation of photographs and its consequences for present day visual culture in Uganda. It also discusses my artistic practice as research method, which led to the digitisation of numerous historical collections of photographs. This resulted in eight books and in exhibitions that took place in Uganda and in Europe. The research was conducted in collaboration with both human and non-human actors. These actors included photographs, their owners, Ugandan picture makers and visitors to the exhibitions that were organised in Uganda and Western Europe. This methodology led to insights into differences in the production and uses of, and into meanings given to, photographs in both Ugandan and Dutch contexts. Understanding differences between ebifananyi and photographs shapes the communication about photographs between Luganda and English speakers. Reflection on the conceptualisations languages offer for objects and for sensible aspects of the surrounding world helps prevent misunderstandings in communication in general. Show less
Thisinterdisciplinary research argues how a scrupulous reading of the medium ofphotography, through geography and philosophy, can shed light on thespatiotemporal account of the concept of place. To... Show moreThisinterdisciplinary research argues how a scrupulous reading of the medium ofphotography, through geography and philosophy, can shed light on thespatiotemporal account of the concept of place. To do this, it breaks down theparticipatory elements of photography into six tropes: the photographer, thecamera, the photograph, the photographic image, the spectator, and thephotographic genre. Subsequently, it looks at each of the aforementioned tropesthrough the lens of place, indicating how a place cannot be the content of adefinite representation, as if fixed in time and space. In other words, insteadof analysing place through space, this research gives precedence to the formerto argue how place creates space (the photographer), how it fixes space (thecamera), how it passes through space (the photograph), how it interpolatesspace (the photographic image), how it promises space (the spectator), and howit operationalizes space in-between the text and the image (the photographicgenre). Therefore, rather than viewing space as an abstract entity thatcontinually evades representation, this dissertation demonstrates theimperceptible, intangible, and intractable aspects of each partaker ofphotography through its unprecedented theoretical approach. Show less
Short description of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO)'s collection of lantern slides (glass slides used in lectures); report on digitisation project (2017).
In September 2017, Leiden University opened the Asian Library to house its world renowned and extensive Asian collections. This includes the largest collection on Indonesia worldwide and some of... Show moreIn September 2017, Leiden University opened the Asian Library to house its world renowned and extensive Asian collections. This includes the largest collection on Indonesia worldwide and some of the foremost collections on South and Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and Korea. "Voyage of Discovery" contains more than twenty essays by academics, curators, and authors on their experiences with the Leiden collections. Richly illustrated and showcasing twenty-five treasures from the Asian Library, such as unique manuscripts and rare maps, this book offers a beautiful look inside the Asian Library. Show less
Central to this research is the Urban Future-project, which consists of a large archive of artworks made from 2002 until now. The original question underpinning this project was: what... Show moreCentral to this research is the Urban Future-project, which consists of a large archive of artworks made from 2002 until now. The original question underpinning this project was: what influence do chaos, entropy and fragmentation have on the viability of the rapidly developing urbanizing world? In the course of the research project, the (literature and field) explorations led to the assumption that there is a demonstrable and necessary link between the quality of life in the city and vital social cohesion on the one hand and chaos, entropy and fragmentation on the other. In the artistic part of the research focuses on the question: is it possible to make the supposed connection between quality of urban life and chaos, entropy and fragmentation visible in artwork and, if so, how? In the written dissertation, working methods and strategies are contextualized and analyzed. The visual part derives from an artist's position which uses non-verbal, sensorial strategies to reach new insights. It mainly focuses on the visual and aesthetic possibilities of aspects of fragmentation, chaos and entropy because Scholten considers these aspects, as productive forces, to be the core of the experience of urbanization. Show less
This thesis engages with the ongoing debate regarding how photographs can contribute to the writing of black South African history. In the field of South African visual history, a... Show more This thesis engages with the ongoing debate regarding how photographs can contribute to the writing of black South African history. In the field of South African visual history, a significant literature explores the “white gaze” that emanates from the administrative and missionary photographic archives of the colonial period. Comparatively fewer studies, however, have addressed how black South Africans pictured themselves, largely due to the presumption that black visual archives are scarce and difficult to access. This thesis draws upon previously unexplored photographic evidence from the mid twentieth century—intimate photographs found in black homes. I argue that these images constitute an alternative archive and original source of history. Such archives present a radically different perspective on black urban communities than that emanating from public photographic collections. Photographic portraiture translates how black South Africans wanted to be seen, according to their own conventions. To study everyday photographic practices is to reflect on the set of values, attitudes and ideas that influenced this exercise of self-representation. This thesis employs a variety of methods and approaches—photo elicitation, identifying patterns in poses and conventions, scrutinizing background details, and locating photographs in today’s landscape—to help unravel the historical relevance of seemingly mundane images. Show less
When photography is discussed as a colonialist imaging practice, two obvious notions of seeing and being seen come into play. Seeing implies empowerment; being seen does not.
Accounts of colonial photography in the Dutch East Indies focus on European photographers and exceptional figures like Kassian Cephas, the first (known) native Javanese photographer.1 Yet... Show moreAccounts of colonial photography in the Dutch East Indies focus on European photographers and exceptional figures like Kassian Cephas, the first (known) native Javanese photographer.1 Yet photography was not simply a ‘European’ technology transplanted from the European metropole to the Asian colony. Decentring European photographers from the history of photography in the Indies reveals the more circuitous - and Asian - routes by which photography travelled to and within the archipelago. Show less
Photography was first introduced to India in 1840, only a year after the announcements of the daguerreotype and calotype processes in France and England. The fragility of this early material, the... Show morePhotography was first introduced to India in 1840, only a year after the announcements of the daguerreotype and calotype processes in France and England. The fragility of this early material, the uniqueness of the daguerreotype and the harshness of the Indian climate mean that photographs from this time are scarce, leaving us with a fragmented picture of the development of the medium. Show less
Almost immediately after the invention of photography in 1839, photographers embarked on expeditions throughout the colonial world. Entrepreneurial photographers rushed to locations along the... Show moreAlmost immediately after the invention of photography in 1839, photographers embarked on expeditions throughout the colonial world. Entrepreneurial photographers rushed to locations along the colonial trail across the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, the Pacific, and Asia, to create images of ancient monuments and ‘exotic others’. They created lavish albums of photographs, making available pieces of the periphery for sale in European metropoles. Colonised people and places became the ongoing subjects of the colonial lens. Show less
Jan George Mulder, a salesman from Haarlem, left a legacy of over 2000 stereo photographs, more than half originating from his time in French colonial Indochina. Yet not one of them contains a... Show moreJan George Mulder, a salesman from Haarlem, left a legacy of over 2000 stereo photographs, more than half originating from his time in French colonial Indochina. Yet not one of them contains a caption or even a hint about the contents. What’s more, Mulder’s life in Vietnam remains something of a mystery. John Kleinen immersed himself in this unique collection, determined to learn more about the images and the man behind them. Show less
At the end of the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded the Philippine Islands to the United States. The U.S. engaged in a three-year war against the Filipinos, who fought fiercely for their... Show moreAt the end of the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded the Philippine Islands to the United States. The U.S. engaged in a three-year war against the Filipinos, who fought fiercely for their independence, and in 1902 it took possession of a country half a world away. Show less
Postcards from French colonies are sold today as nostalgic evocations of a vanished world. The erotic, opiuminfused images of Indochina have been particularly popular since the elegant fiction of... Show morePostcards from French colonies are sold today as nostalgic evocations of a vanished world. The erotic, opiuminfused images of Indochina have been particularly popular since the elegant fiction of exotic utopia they depict was carefully constructed to justify the colonial enterprise. Show less
