Interview

Magical Thinking

Conversation with Geoffrey Batchen

Geoffrey Batchen, Witold Kanicki

Interview

Magical Thinking

Conversation with Geoffrey Batchen

Geoffrey Batchen, Witold Kanicki

https://doi.org/10.47659/m8.004.int

št. Vol. 5, no. 1
2020
05/04/2021

Magic

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.

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