Today, photography is commonly understood to be in a post-medium age; chemical photography has been superseded by digital means, and the photographic industry now has little use for film-based photographic work. Images circulate in their digital form and the screen of the computer or the phone is the most common way of apprehending still and moving images. Are we moving towards an increasing dematerialisation of the photographic image that has dissolved its physicality? Has the communication and information value of the photographic image superseded its materiality?
The panel members will discuss the identity of the photograph, and its possible dissolution. How do the terms analogue and digital make us rethink the dissemination of images? Does the digital dissolve the photographic image, and in doing so, occlude its own history? Can we account for degrees of dissolution by identifying key moments in the history of photographic practice, theory and criticism that precede digitalisation?
Olivier Richon was born in Lausanne in 1956. He studied film and photographic arts at the Polytechnic of Central London. He is Professor and Head of the Photography programme at the Royal College of Art. A monograph of his work, Real Allegories, is published by Steidl (2006). Forthcoming publications include: Acedia: on Idle Images (Encore, Istanbul). Kitchen Corner: on Walker Evans (One Work, Afterall). Recent exhibitions include Anima Mundi, Max Lust Gallery, Vienna (2015); Waren und Wissen, Weltkulturen Museum Frankfurt (2014);Acedia, Ibid. London (2013), Another London, Tate Britain (2012). He is represented by Ibid. London & Los Angeles.
Alexander García Düttmann is a philosopher with an interest in aesthetics and art. Currently Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture at Goldsmiths (University of London) and Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art, he lectures internationally, and has repeatedly taught courses on art theory. His most recent publication is a book called Derrida and I: The Problem of Deconstruction, published in German by Transcript Verlag (Bielefeld 2008).
Julian Stallabrass is a writer, photographer, curator and lecturer. He is Professor in art history at The Courtauld Institute of Art, and is the author of Art Incorporated, Oxford University Press 2004. He is the editor of Documentary, in the MIT/ Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art series; and Memory of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images, Photoworks, Brighton 2013.
Jessica Barker is the Henry Moore Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She studied History at the University of Oxford, followed by a Masters and PhD in medieval art at The Courtauld Institute of Art. Her current research explores the relationship between medieval funerary monuments and the viewer. This involves a study of photography, with particular emphasis on the tension between the presentation of tomb sculptures in photographs and the experience of these monuments in situ.