In 1975, the American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin submitted an MA thesis to the University of New Mexico entitled "Revolt against the Mystical." This obscure yet fascinating text - autobiography, hagiography, a hodgepodge of anecdotes - forms the starting point for a series of explorations into the history of myth and discourse in photography.
The following are examined in four chapters:
- the history of retouching between visibility and invisibility;
- the conflict between the apparatus medium and the signature principle,
- the competitive relationship between early photography and painting
- the experiments and speculations about a photograph of the invisible
- the reception of the first photographs of the Shroud of Turin
- the mythical device of the mortifying gaze of Medusa
The focus is on the photo-theoretical debates of the 19th century, in which the expectations, conceptions and reservations developed that are still virulent in the notes of the photographer Witkin, written a hundred years later.
info
Author: Stefanie Diekmann
Number of pages: 244 pages
Published: 2003
ISBN: 9783770537778
Publisher: Fink
Type: Paperback
Language: German
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Emil Fink Verlag
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D-70469 Stuttgart
E-Mail: info@fink-verlag.de
