Operating in alternative photography: agency through prolonged photographic acts

ABSTRACT

The popularisation of digital photography has widened the gap between mainstream photography and alternative photographic processes. Analyses of the so-called post-photographic era have largely ignored the production and reception mechanisms beyond the hegemonic digital turn. Likewise, scholars and artists working with alternative photography processes have focused on technical proficiency, separating themselves from the photographic ontological theories of the last decade. Nevertheless, some contemporary alternative processes photographers (such as Chris McCaw, Meghann Riepenhoff, Eduardo Nave, Thomas Bachler, and Susan Derges) attempt to emphasise the physicality of the chosen medium and to integrate it with the significance of the image through a methodological operation of the capture time. This article aims to review the theoretical frame of the post-photographic era to encompass the ideas and contributions of these alternative process photographers, focusing on the artists’ agency on photographic communication.

KEYWORDS:

• Contemporary photography
• alternative processes photography
• post-photography
• hermeneutics of seeing
• visual studies on photography

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Vicente Pla-Vivas

Vicente Pla-Vivas is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Valencia, where he teaches History of Photography, Contemporary Arts and Aesthetics, and co-heads the Valencian Archive of Design (Arxiu Valencià del Disseny). He also lectures in the Photography Production and Creation Masters degree at the Espai d’Art Fotogràfic de València. His research can be framed within the theoretical field of visual studies and, focusing on the historical interpretations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European graphic illustration, painting, and photography, aims to open the cultural connections of the History of Art and Aesthetics with the political and scientific thinking. In 2010 he published the book Graphic illustration in the nineteenth century. Functional and dysfunctional features (La ilustración gráfica del siglo XIX. Funciones y disfunciones). Since then, he has been invited to take part in the Workshop on Satirical, Caricature, and Graphic Illustration (ASCIGE) at the Nouvelle Sorbonne University, Paris, and regularly collaborates in International Arts Festivals such as Incubarte (6 and 7) and Perifèries 13. Committed to making contemporary art accessible to all, he has participated in outreach programmes at the Cañada Blanch Foundation (Fundación Cañada Blanch), the Contemporary Culture Centre of Valencia (Centre de Cultura Centemporània del Carme) and the Valencian Institute of Modern Arts (IVAM). He has also published various criticism works of contemporary artists and develops curatorial tasks at the University of Valencia, the Casa Museu Benlliure of Valencia and the IVAM.