Documentation as Strategy – Photography and Archive

The photographic image has always been closely connected to the concept of the archive. Since the 19th century, photographs have been used as media data carriers in various fields of study including medicine, anthropology, history, meteorology and geology. As a (new) form of visualisation, photography was used for measuring and classifying, making inventories and presenting evidence. In Pencil of Nature (1844), Henry Fox Talbot envisioned the possibilities of the new visual medium: “The spectrum ranged from the time-saving reproduction of illustrations, botanical collections and documents to archiving and inventory-making functions and speculation over the photographic image as a ‘new kind of evidence’, as a ‘silent testimony’ in court.” [Geimer 2002: 8]

Collecting, recording, measuring and cataloguing are the central functions that have linked archival with photographic practices since the emergence of the medium and were applied to construct information systems [see Geimer 2002; Wolf 2002; Wolf 1996] [4]. They concur with the view that mechanically produced photographic images are recordings in which the phenomena themselves are inscribed. Despite the significance for historical discourse of the mode of recording and the limitations of the respective technology [see Wolf 1996: 248-251], the basic idea of the relationship between object and image remains. As technology has become increasingly sophisticated, the idea that photographs provide true images – in so far as phenomena and things are inscribed on to them – has become supplemented by the observation that photographs can make movements perceptible which are not directly accessible to the human eye, as in chronophotography.

With these few references to the early history of the link between photography and archive I would like to outline a field in which the artefacts of the performance archive can (and should) be contextualised. Both the appearance of simple readability, accessible by direct viewing, and the presumed value of visual artefacts as evidence point to the special relationship between image and object in the case of photography (and film) which is also described as ‘indexical’.

Peirce developed the index sign type in his three-part sign system at a time when photography was just becoming established as a pictorial medium. For this reason the medium of photography is an essential part of his codification [Lunenfeld 2002: 166-167]. Its advantage here is that it derives the special relationship between the object (in front of the camera) and the photographic image – often described as its reference to reality unlike other, previous image-creating techniques – from the technical procedure itself. The concept of ‘index’ has been formative for discourse on photography and is frequently mentioned in connection with another term, much contemplated in the field of media theory in recent years: that of the ‘trace’. Peter Geimer has pointed out that it is precisely the technology of photography that makes photographic images as traces or impressions of the phenomena pictured ambiguous. Strictly speaking, only the photogram can be regarded as such [Geimer 2007: 95-120]. But the effect of the photographic image as a reference to reality – to something that was there – still prevails, even if we are now conscious of the constructive methods involved in photography.

Lastly, this relationship between object and image in photography and film concerns the concept of the ‘documentary’. This too stresses the authenticity and evidential value of the image as a ‘seen’ reality. The concept of documentary work first entered the discourse on photographic and filmic modes of representation in the late 1920s in reaction to the growing number of film genres and the artistic aspirations of certain photographers of the early 20^th century. The documentary is concerned not only with authentic evidential value over a long period of time but also with political and educative aims, didactic measures, the constitutions of public institutions and the development of new journalistic formats [e.g. Solomon Godeau 2003]. Contemporary discourse on the documentary, especially with regard to film, no longer speaks only of strategies of the authentic and authentication [e.g: Hattendorf 1994], dealing with documentary construction as a form of mise en scène both in front of and with the camera. It also speaks of the fact that an element of this construction lies in the contextualisation of how films are presented and perceived, that is, how their reception is arranged [Odin 1991]. When we speak of visual documents in the performance art archive, we should be aware of this connection and take it into consideration when re-reading photographs and films/videos.

Below I would like to look at examples of two aspects concerning both work on and in the archive:
Firstly I would like to point out the relevance of the mode of recording for the readability of the archive’s visual artefacts. This can be described, in the words of Vilém Flusser, as an aspect of the ‘apparatus-operator complex’ [Flusser 1998]. Secondly, with respect to the difference between photos and film in the work of the archive, I would like to discuss the significance of modes of arrangement for publishing and presenting image series and moving images etc.