Fotomuseum Winterthur announces
new blogger Walead Beshty

Grüzenstrasse 44+45
CH-8400 Winterthur, Zurich

T +41 52 234 10 60
F +41 52 233 60 97
fotomuseum@fotomuseum.ch

www.blog.fotomuseum.ch
www.fotomuseum.ch

Our new blog Still Searching – An Online Discourse on Photography goes into the next round with Walead Beshty (b. 1976). The internationally known photographer, professor, and writer who lives and works in Los Angeles, will be blogging for us until the end of May 2012. Beshty’s concern is the exceptional position of photography within the (art) world today. Why is it “that a medium that was born less than two hundred years ago, in the midst of the industrial revolution, would be the primary contemporary vehicle of the western pictorial tradition?”, is just one of the questions he asks in his first post.

In his second blog post, Beshty zooms in on various thinkers from Flusser to Barthes who practice what he calls an “apocalypse of the image”: “The photograph becomes exclusively the testament to a loss or lack, a marker of absence, a presence defined in negative rather than positive terms, and this dead end is always the foregone conclusion of attempts to find solidity in signification.”

Read Walead Beshty’s whole posts and share your own thoughts on www.blog.fotomuseum.ch.

Still Searching—An Online Discourse on Photography aims to be a continually growing and developing Internet discourse on the medium of photography that features a multitude of participants; it is conceived as an online debate on forms of photographic production, techniques, applications, distribution strate­gies, contexts, theoretical foundations, ontology, and perspectives on the medium. It explores photo­graphy’s role as a seminal visual medium of our time—as art, as a communication, and information tool in the context of social media or photojournalism, and as a form of scientific or legal evidence. This discourse will be conducted by theorists, critics, educators, enthusiasts, users, and also photo­graph­ers. Still Searching is organized and moderated by the Fotomuseum Winterthur and located on its website. It is supported by numerous institutional partners from all over the world.

The German photo historian and theorist Bernd Stiegler kicked off the blog (January 15 to February 29), the Indian writer Aveek Sen (March 1 to April 14), US artist Walead Beshty (April 15 to May 31), and Belgian photo theorist Hilde Van Gelder (June 1 to July 14) follow(ed) until the summer break.

Geoffrey Batchen, the photo historian and theorist currently working in New Zealand, will initiate the autumn season (September 15 to October 31).

New blog by Fotomuseum Winterthur

New blog by Fotomuseum Winterthur

www.blog.fotomuseum.ch

Still Searching – An Online Discourse on Photography

Fotomuseum Winterthur has launched a new English blog on the theory and history of photography. Still Searching – An Online Discourse on Photography aims to be a continually growing and developing Internet discourse on the medium of photography that features a multitude of participants. It is conceived as an online debate on forms of photographic production, techniques, applications, distribution strategies, contexts, theoretical foundations, ontology and perspectives on the medium. It explores photography’s role as a seminal visual medium of our time. Still Searching is moderated by the Fotomuseum Winterthur and can be accessed via its website: www.fotomuseum.ch or directly on blog.fotomuseum.ch

Still Searching is aimed at anyone interested in photography and visual theory. This includes, but is not limited to, academics and professionals. It is supposed to be highly interactive—everybody is invited to join the debate and comment on the issues raised in the blog.

Still Searching was launched on January 15, 2012 by the German photo historian and theorist Bernd Stiegler writing about various aspects of photographic realism. The Indian writer Aveek Sen, (March 1 to April 14), US artist Walead Beshty (April 15 to May 31), and Belgian photo theorist Hilde Van Gelder (June 1 to July 14, 2012) will follow until the summer break. Geoffrey Batchen, the photo historian and theorist currently working in New Zealand, will initiate the autumn season (September 15 to October 31).

Aveek Sen, the Indian author, curator and teacher, who is our current blogger (till April 14), wants to open up the discussion on photography towards a realm of the promiscuous—a word he steals from the lexicon of sexuality to use in relation to the creative process. By the ‘creative process,’ he is not simply referring to the making and showing of photographs, but to the entire web of relationships that connects looking, thinking, reading, listening, remembering and everyday life. Moving the discussion beyond the Barthes/Benjamin/Sontag trinity that dominates writing on photography, he wants to use other works of art – literature, above all, and music – as starting points for reflection and debate, blurring the conventional distinction between theory and practice.

FOTOMUSEUM WINTERTHUR
Grüzenstrasse 44+45 , CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
Phone: +41 52 234 10 60
Fax: +41 52 233 60 97
fotomuseum@fotomuseum.ch
www.fotomuseum.ch
www.blog.fotomuseum.ch