Darren Campion on Thomas Albdorf

Much of this article should resonate for students in Photo II in relation to our (all too brief) conversation on theoretical frameworks of/for photography.  Writing about the works of Albdorf, Campion suggests:

"However disparate these works may initially appear, concerned as they are with various sorts of photographic production, the sum of what Albdorf has created is a study of the medium that can grapple with its diverse and often contradictory uses. As photography does not submit to a unified aesthetic identity, any response to the sort of questions being asked here will necessarily have to contend with that characteristic evasiveness. If assuming that he is solely engaged with the investigation of photography as such is perhaps to define Albdorf’s work too narrowly – and indeed to misunderstand the wider consequences of photographic representation – reading across his various projects, it seems instead that they are a sustained effort to build a composite image of photography as a means of making the world visible, with each advance being a part of the whole. Albdorf’s diverse approach is ideally situated to untangle the mesh of possibilities that make photography what it is – and which, in turn, determine how it is used."

You can read the full article HERE.

And, to see more of Albdorf's work, click HERE.

Image Credit:  Thomas Albdorf, from the series Former Writer (Sourced from paper-journal.com)

Photographs in the (Real) World

I came across a couple of interesting posts that related nicely to our conversation in Photo II yesterday - particularly regarding the indexical nature of the photograph as related to authenticity, as well as the nature of being an attendant observer of the world.

Click HERE to read the most recent contribution to Still Searching by Martin Jaeggi, where he interestingly discusses the complicated relationship between the still and moving image, "Despite their more or less identical technical basis, photography in the 20th century was a medium that was considered to have an elevated claim to veracity and authenticity, whereas film was the very epitome of artifice and glorious lies."

And click HERE to read a brief excerpt from The Incoherent Light on the work of British photographer Raymond Moore along with a few clips from a film made about his work.

Raymond Moore, Image from Every so often monograph, 1984

Kameelah Janan Rasheed

Just found out about the work of this prolific young artist via the Incoherent Light today.  Another artist using found and re-appropriated imagery in an innovative manner.  Her artist statement says, "My work is an excavation of memories. As an art of excavation, I am concerned with making both my process and product visible.  My work is an exploration of the materials that operate as functions of time, an occasional exorcism of insistent memories, an inquiry into the cognitive shrines we build to memories, an examination of the rituals of (re)memory, and an investigation of the role photography plays in framing and mediating our relationship with time. I make use of documentary photography, rephotography, the repurposing of found/orphaned visual as well as textual data, and collage to (re)write histories. I am concerned with the processes of salvaging memories, reconstructing narratives from fragments, and creating public records."  You can read more HERE, and view more of her work HERE.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, 5: No Instructions for Assembly, V