New Blogger for 'Still Searching'
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Geoffrey Batchen initiates the autumn session of 'Still Searching'
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Info
Eminent photo theorist Geoffrey Batchen writes for Fotomuseum Winterthur's blog STILL SEARCHING From September 15 till October 31, 2012 To read and comment go to www.blog.fotomuseum.ch
Contact
fotomuseum@fotomuseum.ch
+41522341060
+41522336097
Address
http://www.fotomuseum.ch
Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44+45
8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
Starting September 15 our blog Still STILL SEARCHING – AN ONLINE DISCOURSE ON PHOTOGRAPHY will start its autumn session with the eminent photo theorist GEOFFREY BATCHEN who will be our blogger till the end of October 2012. Geoffrey Batchen is currently teaching at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. His books include 'Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography' (1997), 'William Henry Fox Talbot' (2008) and 'Suspending Time: Life, Photography, Death' (2010). He has also co-edited 'Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis' (2012).
The theme of his contribution to Still Searching is inspired by Walter Benjamin's famous essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility' (1935-36). Or in Geoffrey Batchen's own words, 'rather, it is inspired by the striking absence of discussions of reproduction and its effects in the literature about photography since this essay first appeared. So I guess I am searching, in the first instance, for the reasons for this absence, given that Benjamin's essay has been made compulsory reading for a generation of students and is one of the most cited in serious texts about the photographic experience. But I am also interested in beginning to explore the ramifications of photography's relationship to reproducibility for our understanding of this medium's history. How has reproducibility manifested itself in photographic practice and experience? What have been the effects of these manifestations? What kind of history would have to be written to encompass these questions? The invention of this history—of a mode of representation capable of doing justice to these questions--is ultimately what I am 'still searching' for.'
Geoffrey Batchen's two co-bloggers are Charlotte Cotton, the author of 'The Photograph as Contemporary Art' and founder of www.eitherand.org as well as Jörg Scheller, art historian, journalist and lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).
All are invited to join the debate and leave their thoughts on
www.blog.fotomuseum.ch
