Thoughts (BAP EJouranl)

"Images are mediations between the world and human beings. Human beings "ex-ist", i.e. the world is not immediately accessible to them and therefore images are needed to make it comprehensible. However, as soon as this happens, images come between the world and human beings. They are supposed to be maps but they turn into screens: Instead of representing the world, they obscure it until human beings' lives finally cease to decode the images and instead project them, still encoded, into the world "out there", which meanwhile itself becomes like an image - a context of sense, of states of things". - Vilém Flusser

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There is an interesting theory out there that I found out while reading an informative book about curating photography exhibitions. 

The author of the essay entitled On Photography’s Liquidity, or, (New) Spaces for (New) Publics? explains how one should start to reconsider the way in which we realte to photography. In particular, the photographic thinking Pijarski suggests consists in understanding photography in its liquidity. What this means is that “one should approach photography in terms of a practice of seeing and thinking [...] rather than one of producing predetermined classes of objects” (p.18). 

In other words he claims that photography’s status is liquid, meaning that “the final form of the photographic work is always a matter of choice that can be made over and over again” (p.21)

- Pijarski, K. (2018), On Photography’s Liquidity, or, (New) Spaces for (New) Publics? in Rastenberg, A.K. and Sikking, I. (2018), Why Exhibit? Positions on Exhibiting Photographies, Fw:Books, Lubin, Poland

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A new idea

As to continue the previous post.

Among human’s most visceral desires there is one that seems somewhat unachievable. The fear of dying - which is arguably different from the well-known survival instinct - has often spurred to contrive a way of bypassing death itself. But there is a problem at the very base of this wish: the passing of time is irreversible. However, while it is true that this problem has not yet found an answer, people have readily found alternative ways of overcoming the future- directed flowing of time. One of them is certainly the representation – through manual or mechanic ways – of a subject within a certain physical space. Indeed, it appears that since 1888, when George Estaman’s Kodak industry introduced the No.1 Kodak camera, the act of taking pictures began to be seen as the perfect way to fulfil our inherent desire to remember the past and to outlast the present.

The other method consists in conserving the otherwise-decomposing entity in specific chemical substances.

This project aims at investigating the relationship between these two processes by taking pictures of people and their adopted conserving specimen. By drawing upon photography - whose idiosyncratic properties make it the representational medium par excellence - the idea of conserving is expanded to the living being. 
 Indeed, as observed above, the conservation liquid and the photograph share a mutual purpose: they halt the relentless direction of time by inhibiting its physical effects. By portraying both the living person and the conserving animal, the photograph is able to snare both provide the viewer with a seemingly absurd condition. A condition that is ultimately dictated by photography’s most valuable characteristic: its indexicality, that is its being the physical imprint of the past, brings about a serious paradox. Time’s passing collapses as the represented and the representation no longer coincides between each other in the same way as the conserving specimen overcomes temporal relations between past, present and future. Interestingly enough, however, the photograph is clearly stating that the depicted person has his own temporal destiny, meaning that time kept flowing for him. Conversely, with the conserving specimen death and decay lose their meaning. On the whole, this project examines the threshold between life and death in visual terms.

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I came across this book while doing some research at the Grant Museum for an alternative project to the one I recently proposed. 

The Grant Museum is a Natural History Museum located in University Street, in front of the UCL. It contains every kind of conserving specimen. The interesting thing is that each specimen is adopted by a person: what this means is that by adopting a specimen the individual is supporting funds for the Museum.

While it is true that it is unquestionably fair, this concept spurred my imagination. What if I made some portraits of the specimen with the one who adopted it? What issues could be raised?

A few meters away from the Museum, a Waterstones venue seemed as the perfect place where I could reflect on such questions. I entered the cafè-style bookshop and it took me a few seconds to make my way down to the photography section. There, while browsing some books, I noticed this big book titled Conserving. At first, I thought it represented a distasteful project, but after a few moments I picked it up. What I discovered while looking at the pictures was that the artists, Daniel and Geo Fuchs, focused on three different kinds of conserving species: fish, animals and even humans. The last one was doubtlessly the most viscerally moving. Dead people in conserving liquid with a deadpan look. But by reading the enclosed texts, I started understanding the main concept behind the project. This was an investigation on the threshold between what it means to be alive and what it means to be dead. 

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I recently took these two books on loan and I am really happy to understand how the world of publishing works. They both contain a full overview of the process, which should apparently take at least one year from the date of publication.

It is also interesting to understand how a publishing company works, since within the second book all of the roles within such companies are very well explained.

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Starting to edit the photobook in InDesign. The first difficulty I am encountering is obviously the editing of the pictures. It is going to be crucial the way they are going to be displayed, namely their sequencing. Moreover, I am not entirley sure about the format of the book, that is the trim size. At the moment I am stuck on an A4 in horizontal mode, but I do not exclude at all that this is going to change. 

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I loved the work by Peter Puklus, entitled Handbook to the Stars. It is a photobook consisting of more than a single book, the reason being. pictures are created by alining them. 

I think this is a great idea, even though I may still opt for something a bit more classical.

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I recently bought this photbook entitled Blind Spot by Teju Cole. I found out that he did a similar project to the one that I am currently developing. However, although focusing on a single city, he grouped a collection of pictures from an array of different countries. I really love both the way he writes and his photographic style. Moreover, it is a strange format, as it is between an A5 and an A4. Apparently dimensions are as follows: height 28 cm, length 22cm. I don’t really enjoy the paper on which the pictures have been printed, but I really enjoyed the book as a whole.

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I am thinking of making a book where my three years spent here in London are collected in the form of a photobook. I am still not sure whether this is going to be a good idea, but I am starting a process of recollection that I hope is going to suggest a possible link between when I started and how I am concluding.

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In the process of revisiting some of my old pictures, I now see that grouped together, they belong to a particular way I look at the world. Moreover, I find that this very low contrast black and white is apt to create a sense of both deadpan peacefulness and of foreboding emptiness.

I am left wondering if this could be the beginning of a new project, one that would look with a nostalgic approach the way things are.

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Trajectories 

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A series of pictures I find work well together.

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