Symbolism and National Identity in Carl Durheim’s Photographic Work

In this article I explore the work of Carl Durheim (1810-1890) as a production of highly symbolic imagery geared toward the visual creation of the Swiss national identity in the wake of the establishment of the Confederation in 1848. After providing some background about Durheim and the early history of photography in Switzerland I focus on Durheim’s pictures of the so-called Heimatlose (vagabonds), which were commissioned by the Police and Justice Department in Bern. I argue that these pictures cannot be interpreted merely as mug shots taken in order to reproduce the identity of the depicted subjects; rather, using the rhetorical force of photography, these images projected onto the Heimatlose the ideal of the new Swiss society, based on bourgeois values and clearly demarcated from everything foreign through an idealized operation of drawing geographical and social borders.

‘I’m your automatic colour’ La colorazione automatica delle immagini in antropologia

Colour photographs now represent almost all the images produced with the new reality capture tools, mobile phones, which in 2020 ‘took’ 90% of all photos of that year. Black and white is relegated to artistic expression, even newspapers have converted to colour for some years. In the history of photography, although research on colour is attempted from the early stages, it is necessary to wait until 1861 with the experiences of James Clerk Maxwell who created a stable colour image. However, it is from the fifties of the twentieth century that the use of colour becomes ‘popular’ even in a more aesthetic dimension than an objective reproduction of reality. Part of the ethnographic, anthropological, archaeological and field research, on the other hand still makes use of consolidated and inexpensive black and white for a long time. On these images largely available online and open source you can conduct automatic colouring experiences. The procedure, managed with artificial intelligence algorithms with deep learning processes, is always more widely used with free applications and allows to obtain qualitatively more and more relevant results, even if some critical analysis is still necessary. This article presents the state of the art to 2021 of automatic colouring, with the comparison between algorithms developed since 2016 and showing with experimental examples both the possibilities of rendering and even the critical issues that emerged with the application in anthropological photographs, with the aim of extracting information that is not very evident in the originals in black and white.

The Pen as Camera

The photographic effect of overexposure is analogous to Michael Finnissy’s technique of selective musical borrowing. Just as a photographer uses the camera to allow an overabundance of light to wash out pictorial details, Finnissy uses his transcriptive pen to allow an overabundance of silence to alter and fragment his borrowed sources. Case studies demonstrate Finnissy’s borrowing of cadential phrases by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, and Bruckner in his solo piano works Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sind (1992) and The History of Photography in Sound (1995–2001). Comparing original sources, unpublished sketches, and published autographs reveals the composer’s precise transcriptive mechanisms. Measuring the alteration of tonal function enacted by specific harmonic and rhythmic distortions illuminates Finnissy’s pre-compositional practice while celebrating the sonic experience of his music on its own terms.

Brief Glimpses of Beauty. Thinking about the History of Lithuanian Photography

The article proposes a critical rethinking of the multi-layered phenomenon of Lithuanian photography. From the beginning, in the 19th century Lithuanian photography cherished an exceptional status within a cultural landscape, being considered a vehicle of lofty, patriotic emotions. The article is reassessing the social and cultural role of Lithuanian photo- graphers and is looking into a symptomatic lack of synchronicity with the medium’s grand narratives. The Lithuanian history of photography seems to be a consistent and exceptional narrative developed within a relative- ly small milieu of artists based in their homeland as well as Lithuanian émigrés. According to the author, indexical and documentary qualities of photography constitute the core of the phenomenon. The text is advocating inclusivity for non-Lithuanian authors, be it Polish Lithuanians, Russians, Jews, Germans, or Lithuanian Americans. Looking at photographs from the perspectives of literature (quoting Marcelijus Martinaitis and Tomas Venclova) and contemporary art (Jonas Mekas and Fluxus) may be also useful in reshaping and opening up the discourse of the discipline.

WŁADYSŁAW KLIMCZAK (1923–2021), NAMELY PERSISTENCE IN ACHIEVING GOALS

The protagonist of the paper is Władysław Klimczak, a long-standing President of the Cracow Photographic Association as well as the founder and the first director of Cracow’s Museum of History of Photography. The portrait of W. Klimczak is outlined: a controversial individual of a clear-cut personality, eccentric, dynamic and hard-working, he was nevertheless extremely professional in his activities. The documentary exhibitions as well as the ‘Venus’ controversial ones mounted and curated by Władysław Klimczak are discussed.

Collecting locally : Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama in Alabama institutions

Within the United States, the American South can be perceived as its own entity. From the arts to Southern cuisine, the South commands attention with its own history, myths and culture. Within the history of photography, Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama are arguably some of the most culturally significant images taken of the state and its residents. This thesis investigates how photographs of Alabama are collected in the same locality. By examining the collecting practices of four Alabama institutions in regards to photographs in general, and Walker Evans specifically, this case study will expand on the question of how photographs, in a Southern cultural context, work to create a sense of place and attachment to local geography.

DENIS BRIHAT PIERRE CORDIER JEAN-PIERRE SUDRE: a European experiment

The most evident aspect that the photographic works of Pierre Cordier, Denis Brihat and Jean-Pierre Sudre have in common is their use of chemical interventions in the printing process to produce unique photographic objects. Sudre, Brihat and Cordier are important to the history of photography because their work questions the mainstream practices of 20th century analog photography. They do this by transforming conventional photographic materials into non-conventional images, and by being active agents in the creation of these images. Sudre’s, Brihat’s and Cordier’s works bring questions about photographic materiality back into the critical discussion of what defines photography. I intend to investigate how the nature of photographic materiality has been addressed during significant periods and movements in the history of photography before Sudre, Brihat and Cordier did their work, in order to understand how and why their approach is innovative and important.

The space between photography and film : an object study from the Warner Bros.-First National Keybook collection

Historically and conceptually, film stills occupy a precarious position between two academic disciplines: cinema studies and the history of photography. They are overshadowed in collections by more prominent and "valuable" cinematic or photographic objects competing for the same space and money; and they have received relatively little attention in scholarship, exhibitions and publications. The film still is a unique and distinctive genre of object, possessing its own history, physicality, and aesthetic. After establishing a historical and descriptive context for understanding the film still as an object with multiple incarnations - commercial, nostalgic, historical, educational, artistic - this thesis transitions into an analysis of actual stills. By examining the physical and aesthetic characteristics of a small selection of stills from George Eastman House's "Warner Bros.-First National Keybook Collection," drawn from the keybooks of Other Women's Husbands (1926), Lights of New York, and 42nd Street, an argument emerges for the establishment of the film still as a genre of photographic object distinguishable by its physical and aesthetic characteristics as much as by its origin.