Geoffrey Batchen
Geoffrey Batchen’s (born 1956) work as a teacher, writer and curator focuses on the history of photography. He is particularly interested in the way that photography mediates every other aspect of modern life, whether we’re talking about sex or war, atoms or planets, commerce or art. Besides being an expert in the general theory and historiography of photography, Geoff has helped to pioneer the study of vernacular photography (photographs not intended as art, such as snapshots, commercial photos, and objects like photographic jewellery). He has published extensively, in eighteen languages to date. He is the author of Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (1997, with subsequent translations into Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and Slovenian), Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History(2001), Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (2004), William Henry Fox Talbot (2008), What of Shoes: Van Gogh and Art History (2009, in German and English), and Suspending Time: Life, Photography, Death (2010, in Japanese and English). He has also edited an anthology of essays titled Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida (2009) and co-edited another titled Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (2012). Over the past twenty-five years, Geoff has also been involved in the international art world as a curator and editor.
Scholars and museums tend to avoid the evidence of photography’s reproducibility. It is an unwelcome reminder of commerce and labour, of promiscuity and dissemination, of transformation and transgression.
Abstract
Bio
References
PDF
Close
Olena Chervonik talks with Geoffrey Batchen about his two most recent publications: Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination, that reached bookshelves in 2018, and Negative/Positive: A History of Photography, slated for release later in 2020. The conversation revolves around the photographic condition of reproducibility, repetition and difference, embedded in the medium from the time of its inception. While Apparitions explores photography’s relation to various newsprint outlets of the nineteenth century, Negative/Positive traces a comprehensive history of the medium’s propensity for multiplication, predicated on the dependence of photographs on the function of a negative, which, according to Batchen, seems to be a repressed Other in photographic history. A vehicle that enables reproducibility, a photographic negative is rarely discussed in critical literature and even more rarely reproduced or featured in the exhibition space. Batchen ponders this occlusion of a medium’s critical component, suggesting that a negative is linked to photography’s operation as capitalist mode of production. By omitting to profile a negative, we naturalize capitalism’s operational logic – a condition that clearly needs to be upset by directing a critical, revelatory, and thus politically engaged spotlight on photography’s predilection for image massification.
- Keywords: capitalism, commodification, massification, negative, photography, politics of resistance, reproducibility
Olena Chervonik (PhD fellow, the University of Oxford) is writing her dissertation on the history of photography and technologies of vision. Prior to embarking upon her dissertation, Chervonik held a number of curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Izolyatsia – Platform for Cultural Initiatives in Donetsk, Ukraine; and Videonale – Festival for Contemporary Video Art in Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany.
Geoffrey Batchen (BA, PhD Sydney) holds the Professorship of the History of Art in the Department of the History of Art and the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. Professor Batchen’s work as a teacher, writer and curator focuses on the history of photography. His publications include Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (1997); Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (2001); Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (2004); William Henry Fox Talbot (2008); What of Shoes: Van Gogh and Art History (2009); Suspending Time: Life, Photography, Death (2010); Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph (2016); and Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination (2018). He has also edited Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida (2009) and co-edited Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (2012).
- Batchen, Geoffrey. 2019. Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination. Sydney: Power Publications.
- _________. 2020. Negative / Positive: A History of Photography. London: Routledge.
- Batchen, Geoffrey, and Joan Fontcuberta. 2016. “Well, What Is Photography?” Correspondence (October / December). Available online here.
- Shaviro, Steven. 2014. “Speculative Realism – a Primer.” Texte Zur Kunst 93, Spekulation/Speculation: 40–51.
PDF format files of individual interviews are priced at 6.00EUR. If you are subscribed to Membrana Online, you may purchase PDF access to all content on our site: Membrana PDF
(Online subscription is required!)
We have to be careful not to project a nostalgic glow onto the past, as if magic can only be found there and not in our own moment.
Summary
Bio
References
PDF
Close
His long-standing interest in the history of early photography makes Geoffrey Batchen the appropriate speaker to discuss the question of photographic magic. Therefore, our conversation oscillates between magic and realism, but also other antonyms within the medium: negative and positive, analogue and digital. Taking in consideration all these oppositional notions, Batchen suggests that theoreticians “need to acknowledge and embrace photography’s abstractions and contradictions”. Different contradictions within photography’s theory and history became pivotal in our conversation. We also discussed the indexicality of digital images. According to Batchen, the negative/positive system of traditional photography can be compared with the binary code of digital images, which “is therefore based on the same oppositional logic, the same interplay of one and its other, that generated the analogue photograph.” Moreover, digitality does not eliminate the magic character of the contemporary photographs; in this context, Batchen mentions the capacity of instant transmission of snapshots from one place of Earth to another. In conclusion, Batchen reveals some details of his upcoming book Negative/Positive: A History of Photography.
- Keywords: Barthes, digital image, indexicality, magic of photography, negative
Witold Kanicki (1979) is an art historian, assistant professor in Department of Art Education and Curatorial Studies at the University of Arts in Poznan (Poland), and guest lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts (Switzerland). He works as an independent curator and critic. Author of more than 50 articles published in scientific journals as well as in catalogues of exhibitions and magazines on contemporary art and photography. His book on photographic negative and negativity was published in 2016 in Poland. He is interested in history and theory of photography, contemporary art, new museology, and curating. He currently works on the history of Polaroid in the Polish People’s Republic.
Geoffrey Batchen (BA, PhD Sydney) holds the Professorship of the History of Art in the Department of the History of Art and the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. Professor Batchen’s work as a teacher, writer and curator focuses on the history of photography. His publications include Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (MIT Press, 1997); Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (MIT Press, 2001); Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004); William Henry Fox Talbot (Phaidon, 2008); What of Shoes: Van Gogh and Art History (Seemann Henschel, 2009); Suspending Time: Life, Photography, Death (Izu Photo Museum, 2010); Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph (Prestel, 2016); and Obraz a diseminace: Za novou historii pro fotografii (NAMU, 2016). A new collection of his essays,更多的疯狂念头 [More Wild Ideas: History, Photography, Writing], appeared in Chinese in 2017. He has also edited Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida (MIT Press, 2009) and co-edited Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (Reaction, 2012). His latest publication is Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination (Power Publications, 2018). Batchen has also curated numerous exhibitions, which have been shown in Brazil, Australia, USA, Netherlands, Iceland, UK, Germany, Japan, and New Zealand.
- Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang.
PDF format files of individual interviews are priced at 6.00EUR. If you are subscribed to Membrana Online, you may purchase PDF access to all content on our site: Membrana PDF
(Online subscription is required!)
BUY PDF: W. Kanicki & G. Batchen: Magical Thinking – PDF
DOWNLOAD PDF:
I love the capacity of photography to exist in the in-between spaces of thoughtful imagining, and rational dreaming.
Abstract
Bio
PDF
Close
In the conversation, two of the most prominent New Zealand authors in the field of photography talk about the body of work of Anne Noble’s Antarctica photography projects. Had we lived is a re-photographic project reflecting on the tragedies of heroic age exploration (commemorating the centenary of the deaths of Robert Falcon Scott and his men on their return from the South Pole – Terra Nova Expedition or British Antarctic Expedition to the South Pole, 1912) and on the memory of Erebus tragedy of 1975, when a tourist plane flying over Antarctica crashed into Mt Erebus, killing all 257 people on board. Anne Noble re-photographed image taken by Herbert Bowers at the South Pole – the photograph of Scott and his men taken after they arrived at the South Pole to find Amundsen had already been and gone. Phantasms and Nieves Penitentes projects hint at the triumph of Antarctica over human endeavour and as a non-explorer type herself photographer Anne Noble states: “I rather liked this perverse reversal”. Both tragic events have a notable relationship to photography – Erebus in particular, as those who died were likely looking out of the aeroplane windows taking photographs at the time of impact. This relationship is addressed throughout the conversation between the two, providing an insightful commentary on the questions of authenticity, documentary value and the capacity of photography to exist in the in-between spaces of thoughtful imagining, and rational dreaming.
Anne Noble (born 1954) from New Zealand is Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts (Photography) at Massey University, Wellington. Her lens based practice spans landscape, documentary, and installations that incorporate both still and moving images. Antarctica has been a focus over the last decade, an extension of her interest in how perception and cognition contribute to a sense of place. She has made three visits to Antarctica, the most recent in 2008, to complete three photographic book and exhibition projects: Ice Blink (2011), The Last Road (2014), and Whiteout / Whitenoise (forthcoming, 2017). In 2009 she received an Arts Foundation Laureate award in recognition of her contribution to the visual arts in New Zealand. She was the recipient of a 2014 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award. Her current still photographic and video installation projects are concerned with the decline of the honeybee and human relationships to natural biological systems.
Geoffrey Batchen’s (born 1956) work as a teacher, writer and curator focuses on the history of photography. He is particularly interested in the way that photography mediates every other aspect of modern life, whether we’re talking about sex or war, atoms or planets, commerce or art. Besides being an expert in the general theory and historiography of photography, Geoff has helped to pioneer the study of vernacular photography (photographs not intended as art, such as snapshots, commercial photos, and objects like photographic jewellery). He has published extensively, in eighteen languages to date. He is the author of Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (1997, with subsequent translations into Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and Slovenian), Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History(2001), Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (2004), William Henry Fox Talbot (2008), What of Shoes: Van Gogh and Art History (2009, in German and English), and Suspending Time: Life, Photography, Death (2010, in Japanese and English). He has also edited an anthology of essays titled Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida (2009) and co-edited another titled Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (2012). Over the past twenty-five years, Geoff has also been involved in the international art world as a curator and editor.
PDF format files of individual essays are priced at 3.00EUR. If you are subscribed to Membrana Online, you may purchase PDF access to all content on our site: Membrana PDF
(Online subscription is required!)
BUY PDF: Anne Noble: Had We Lived, Geoffrey Batchen – PDF
DOWNLOAD PDF: