The Deaths of Photography, Volume 2: Photo Theories and Art Photography

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Katharina Sykora
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2015 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 277252139

The first part begins with a history of discourses that connect photography and death. Since Its beginnings photography has been considered to be a mortifying medium or a 'dead mirror' of the world. This (dis)qualificatlon appeared especially during the nineteenth century within aesthetic discourses that Imposed their parameters on photography. A counter discourse tried to disprove that photography be only a mechanical reproduction and lifeless cliche of reality defining it as ensouled and lively Image created my an artistic genius. Only in the twentieth century photo theories emancipated themselves from this dichotomy concentrating both on the specific potentials of the medium and its perception and exploring the Interaction of photographer, Image and referent as a complex texture of different agents. These theories also use death as a key for their ontologlcal, anthropological and medium specific Interpretations.The second part analyzes the relationship between death, art and photography. It approaches selected artistic works which refer to iconographies of death, social practices with the dying and theoretical positions concerning the connection of death and photography. These artists try to come close to the limits of the medium by depicting death, and they try to transcend these limitations. Doing so they sometimes follow the model of scientific explorations and at other times they accompany social programs that try to reintegrate death and dying in Western societies. Central to this part of the book is the aesthetic and ethic approach of these artists to death. It asks how they expose the dead or hide them, how they circumscribe death or Invent images for It. Therefore the spectrum of these photographic endeavors spreads from purely documentary to totally staged Images of death and the dying.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants