Author Archives: Hilde Van Gelder

Part 5 – Photography and Humanity

In the catalogue essay to the 1981 exhibition he curated at MoMA under the title Before Photography, Peter Galassi traces photography’s origins in relation to the history of Western painting. Much more than being the offspring from a fruitful juncture of scientific, cultural, and economic determinations, Galassi argues, photography is the final, perfected result of [...]

Posted in Blogger Post | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Responses

Part 4 – Aesthetic Equality

In this fourth posting, I consider a sequence of photographic images and accompanying text fragments that a group of Ramallah based artists and writers – Basel Abbas, Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Nahed Awwad and Inass Yassin – created together with and coordinated by Shuruq Harb and Ursula Biemann (ArtTerritories). Preceded by an introductory essay entitled “Looking Back [...]

Posted in Blogger Post | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Responses

Part 2 – An Anti-Archival Impulse

In this post, I want to continue the reflection on how photography can today serve as a contributing motor for social change by turning our attention to the photographic archive. I would like to focus on a concrete example, the long-term project Theory of Justice initiated by the artist Peter Friedl in 1992. This work [...]

Posted in Blogger Post | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Responses

Part 1 – What Has Photography Done?

In order to grasp what photography can do as an art today, I want to start with looking back, asking ourselves the question: what has photography done so far? What relevant lessons can we learn from photography’s past? Before which carts has photography been put – so to say – ever since it was invented? [...]

Posted in Blogger Post | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 17 Responses