Exhibition Unboxing Photographs: Working in the Photo Archive / Berlin, 16 February–27 May 2018

[Costanza Caraffa]

'Unboxing Photographs: Working in the Photo Archive' opens the boxes of four photo archives to showcase the material diversity of photographs as three-dimensional objects: from glass plate negatives, to 35 mm film, to prints on albumen or silver gelatin paper.

These photo-objects are taken in the hand, tilted and turned over, labeled, cut down, framed, glued into albums, printed, and dispatched or posted online. Contact and inventory sheets, cardboard mounts, card catalogs, and today even display screens are integral parts of the photo-object, or even constitute it.

Since the 19th century, archaeologists, ethnologists, and art historians have worked with photographs and assembled them in archives. There, they are processed and ordered – and only through such treatment do they become usable as documents for scholarly research. These procedures alter the physical properties of photographs and leave behind material traces. Photographs, hence, are neither objective nor timeless. By taking them seriously as objects, and not just as pictures, it becomes possible to tell their multifarious stories.

The exhibition interrogates the commonly practiced and disciplinary conventions that govern the perception and presentation of photographs – for example museum display using passepartouts – and tries out new design possibilities. Working with photo-objects is also central to the artistic interventions of JUTOJO, Ola Kolehmainen, Joachim Schmid, Elisabeth Tonnard, and Akram Zaatari, all of which have been integrated into the exhibition.

Curatorial Concept: Julia Bärnighausen, Costanza Caraffa, Stefanie Klamm, Franka Schneider, Petra Wodtke

Unboxing Photographs: Working in the Photo Archive

An exhibition of the joint research project "Photo Objects – Photographs as (Research) Objects in Archaeology, Ethnology and Art History" 

Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, 16 February – 27 May 2018

Partner: Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut; Institut für Europäische Ethnologie der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Photographic Collection of the Kunstbibliothek and Antikensammlung at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

http://www.smb.museum/en/exhibitions/detail/unboxing-photographs.html

This exhibition is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Other exhibition sponsors are: the Schering Stiftung, and the Verein der Freunde der Antike auf der Museumsinsel Berlin e.V.