Image & Narrative, Vol 11, No 4 (2010) 1 Photography and the book – Introduction
Alexander Streitberger
The papers in this special issue arise from a conference held at the University of Louvain (UCL) in Louvain-la-Neuve in October 2009 under the title Between documentation and fiction – photography in artists’ books. As for the conference, the aim of this publication is to reconsider the functions of photographic images in books created by artistes since the 1960s.
Whereas traditionally the term of ‘documentation’ is linked first and foremost to photography and that of ‘fiction’ to the arts, artists’ books using photography challenge this division in several respects (representational, functional, contextual). Common strategies in artists’ books are, for instance, to base fictional narratives on documentary photographs taken out of their contexts (Broodthaers, Boltanski), to use photographs in artists books in order to document an event, to trace an activity or to visualize an artistic concept (Rusha, LeGac, Huebler), and to compose typological series of the everyday (Feldmann, LeWitt). All these examples have in common an equivoque, ambivalent use of photographs. On a structural level, the interstices between the images and the act of turning the page are often used to leave in suspense the photographic image between reproduction of the real and the imaginary fiction.
This ambivalence is even reinforced if one takes into account the fact that artists’ books, rather than constituting an autonomic genre, often are realized within a wider artistic project, enclosing e.g. installations, expositions, performances (Boltanski, Goldin, Rist, Downsbrough). In all of these cases photographs act as agents between different ‘realities’ – between the object depicted in the image and the image as composition, between image and narrative, between art and documentation, between space and time – in order to create “‘work’ providing work between reader and text.”1
The relationship between the vernacular and high art is stressed by Mieke Bleyen, who refers to the concept of the ‘minor’ (Deleuze and Felix Guattari) in order to analyze Marcel Mariën’s photographic work as balancing between the private (amateurish) and the public (professional), between art and pornography. Ian Walker places Dick Jewell’s
In one way or another, all of the essays assembled here emphasize the in-between position of photographs used in artists’ books.
1
Image & Narrative, Vol 11, No 4 (2010) 2 published book Found Photos in the context of the development of interest in vernacular photography during the 1970s, and relates it to other projects using pictures made in photobooths, both before and since. According to Ulrike Matzer, Peter Piller’s books rise questions of the peculiarities of photography as a medium oscillating between transparence and opacity, between archive and art object, and between high art and the vernacular.
Other essays discuss the ‘cameleonic’ character of photography2
The question of the meaning of photography according to institutional, cultural and historical contexts is raised by David Evans, who explores Wolfgang Tillman’s use of the photograph as a ‘wandering image’ whose meaning changes depending on how and where it is used. Leszek Brogowski relates the work of three contemporary artists (Mathieu Tremblin, Jean-Baptiste Ganne, Hubert Renard) to artistic practices of the 1960s and 1970s where the photographic document is used in opposition to the documentary aesthetics of photojournalism. Considering the historical and cultural changes during the last 50 years, Brogowski concludes that the distinction between document and fiction is no more an act of comparison (between the image and the ‘real’ world) but became an act of interpretation in the sense of the human sciences.
shifting between different media and genres. Taking Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the frame as a starting point, Alexander Streitberger studies the place of photography in Peter Downsbrough’s work where it acts as an agent between the architecture of the book, the architectonic space of the city and the narrative structure of film. Concentrating on the leporello as a special kind of artist’s book, Didier Mathieu highlights the ambivalent character of photographs when they are arranged according to principles of cinematographic montage in order to challenge the conceptual separation of space and time. Olivier Mignon examines the ‘intermediary’ character of Victor Burgin’s book Hôtel Latone (1982), which is situated between artist’s book and photo-novel. This position ‘in-between’ different artistic genres is related to the psychoanalytical notion of displacement, which appears to be a crucial concept in the artistic work and the theoretic writing of the artist in the 1980s.
This issue is completed by two ‘documentary’ approaches representing the viewpoints of the creator and the collector of artists’ books. In his 1976 inaugurated “Man’s Museum”,
2
Helen Westgeest, ‘The Changeability of Photography in Multimedia Artworks’, in: Hilde Van Gelder and Helen Westgeest (ed.), Photography between Poetry and Politics. The Critical Position of the Photographic Medium in Contemporary Art, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2008, pp. 3-18.
Image & Narrative, Vol 11, No 4 (2010) 3 Jacques Lennep realizes sociological portraits of ordinary people, which circulate in the art world in form of exhibitions, books and performances. The here included photo-text documents one of these projects where he presents Alfred Laoureux as an enthusiastic collector of press photographs and other curiosities. A passionate collector of artists’ books, Michel Baudson finally gives an insight in Peter Feldmann’s early book production – the Bilder books of the 1960s and 1970s – where the artist arranges found photographs according to specific themes or categories.
Alexander Streiberger is Professor of Art History at the Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL). Email: alex.streitberger@uclouvain.be
