“My photographs do not lend themselves to reproduction. The very qualities that give them life would be lost in reproduction. The quality of touch in its deepest living sense is inherent in my photographs. When that sense of touch is lost, the heartbeat of the photograph is extinct – dead. My interest is in the living. That is why I cannot give permission to reproduce my photographs.”
Who might have written these words? What kind of photographer may refuse reproduction on the basis that their images are un-reproducible objects? David Campany considers this and other examples from the long-standing tension between the photograph as image and object.
David Campany writes, curates exhibitions and makes art. His books include A Handful of Dust (MACK 2015), The Open Road: photographic and road trips across America (Aperture 2014), Walker Evans: the magazine work (Steidl 2014) and Art and Photography (Phaidon, 2003). In 2013 he curated two major shows of the work of Victor Burgin and Mark Neville:Deeds Not Words, for The Photographer’s Gallery, London. He teaches at the University of Westminster.