Les Matérialités de la photographie 2/3
The theme of materiality, first considered from a technical standpoint, became truly fundamental to photographic studies when the "material turn" of the 1980s affected historical and theoretical reflection on the photographic image. With the generalization of digital techniques, a retrospective interpretation of the analogical period begins, with numerous methodological axes (art history, visual studies, media theory, anthropology, sociology, conservation, and restoration). Should we interpret it as expressing apprehension about the "dematerialization" of the digital?
The (im)materiality of photography brings together researchers, curators, restorers, and artists around the distinction between image and object, emulsion, and support. The increasing scarcity of silver-based media thus prompts an examination of the industrial and post-industrial history of photography while focusing on its production modes. The processes and know-how threatened by a sector’s structural evolution are the subject of new reflections. Far from constituting yet another milestone towards "post-photography", the angle of materiality today requires an ecology of media. On the one hand, a history of the materials, which are frequently dangerous and toxic, is needed to evaluate the ecological footprint of photography. On the other hand, existing research that advocates an archaeology of networks takes into account the financial burden and environmental cost of the creation, distribution, and storage of digital images.
The plurality of these recent contributions invites us to rethink the materiality of photography from a material and processual perspective. What are the materials, the gestures, and the know-how of photography? What economic, industrial, scientific, aesthetic, and philosophical history should be invoked to comprehend its significance?