Multiple-Exposure Photography Explained and Illustrated

Theories in Digital Composite Photographs, 2018

Transpositions: Aesthetico-Epistemic Operators in Artistic Research, 2018

Can we understand photography as transposition? Such a reading seems to be at odds with the major narratives of photo theory. Despite all differences over the question of how photographic images (either still or moving) obtain meanings, there is a basic consensus that an image as such is something different from the specific thing or situation it apparently has a connection to. The main issue of any photo theory, then, is how to define the translation between these two poles of subject and image. The answers range from a direct, indexical relation to no relation at all. Even normative aesthetics of realism that call for closing the gap between subject and image in their first step accept the divide as a problem they promise to solve. 1 The notion of transpositional photography, on the other hand, implies that no ontological transformation occurs, or at least that any kind of transformation is less relevant than the change of position or environment that the term transposition suggests. Thus, to understand photography as transposition means that there are not two states but two positions for the same thing. In the course of the photographic process this thing would not change in regard of what it is but of where it is and what surrounds it. So can we replace the ontological question of photography with a topological one? If we dismiss subject and image as the two states that theories of photography under a semiotic paradigm postulate, we have to ask how one can conceive of an identity across very different manifestations.

Reimagining Communication: Mediation, 2020

2016

Alison Bennett investigated the complex presence of surface in digital photography through the creation of a series of innovative artistic works that extended the use of scanography, photogrammetry, augmented reality and virtual reality as forms of expanded photography. The project had international impact through viral media coverage and touring exhibitions.

Transbordeur 7, 2023

What if the history of photography was ultimately less a history of recorded images than a history of images composed from recorded elements? The rise of assemblages and hybridisation practices in digital cultures prompts us to ask this question. What we today call memes juxtaposes elements that are willingly heterogeneous and whose contrast typically produces satirical effects. In another realm, we notice the proliferation of automatic image generation software that synthesises and combines real or fictional elements with a strong photorealistic charge, sometimes using deep learning technologies. Between these two poles, there’s a need to examine the wide range of practices which overturn the idea of photography as a capture of the real. These shifts in the notion of photography are not, however, solely due to the rise of digital technology. They draw on a long history of the composite image that we intend to develop in the 7th issue of the journal Transbordeur. Talking about composite images rather than “photomontages” allows us to turn away from a narrative influenced mainly by the twentieth-century avant-gardes (Dadaism, Constructivism, Surrealism), and to broaden our point of view beyond the field of art. The modern Western discourse using the industrial metaphor of the mechanical assemblage of pre-existing elements does not cover all the ranges of photographic manipulation. For this issue edited by Laura Truxa, Max Bonhomme and Christian Joschke, we are therefore looking for contributions that examine the relevance of the notion of “composite images” for the history and theory of photography, as well as in the wider field of visual and media studies. Particular emphasis will be placed on the tools and practices of the image, so as to question the limits between retouching and editing, including software such as Photoshop, which plays a central role in our contemporary visual culture. Papers may address one of the following themes, though this should not be taken as exhaustive: 1) Gestures, professions and techniques of composite images; 2) Uses of composite images: production of knowledge and prospective representations; 3) Play and satire at the origin of photographic compositions. Abstracts must be sent to Laura Truxa (truxa.laura@gmail.com), Max Bonhomme (maxbonhomme8@gmail.com) and Christian Joschke (christian.joschke@gmail.com) before September 15th 2021.

Optics and Photonics News, 1999

Space Oddity: Exercises in Art and Philosophy, 2022

The aim of this paper is to identify the mechanisms for producing meaning in the visual through the visual itself, the interpretation of which should not be entrusted to the dimension of the extra-figurative. Focusing on the theoretical opposition of opacity and transparency theorised by Louis Marin, here, three analogue photographs from the early to the mid-twentieth century will be analysed following the visual semiotics methodology. In those photographs, which propose a complex representation of semiotic relevance, the opposition between the represented space and the material surface of the medium will be explored through the analysis of the traces of enunciation within the text.

2016

Looking at the mutations of photography since its origins, one realizes that contrary to what is often believed, it exalts artificiality, fiction and imagination and relies on an anti-naturalistic aesthetic. Could the 19th century be the matrix of our artistic modernity?