Positional note
I am a white, German, able-bodied cis-woman doing a PhD at a university in the South of Europe with the experience of growing up in a working-class milieu. In my work, I commit to the study of visual cultural, critical historiography in education and post-colonial, decolonial and feminist theory. I am particularly invested in images and imaginaries of 'nature' and the ways they are producing a hegemonic relations with the world and its beings.
This photograph is part of my wider contemplation on how to show images that reproduce violence. I was inspired by the photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto who would take long exposure shots of movies. During long exposure photographs, light enters for the time of the opening of the aperture into the camera. In consequence, projections of images appear as brightness/light. This effect is conceptually and visually interesting: The image has been exposed but it is not decipherable in its semiotic composition.
When a spectator – here: me/her – slides between projector and projection screen after the shutter opened, the shadow casted onto the screen makes the image visible in its iconic form. It is only in the shadow figure of the spectator that the image appears. Relating this to how images offered particular viewing positions and thereby construct a particular spectator, the spectator is needed for the image to unfold its effects. I attempted to create photographs that reflect on the conditions that made the images of the picture book and its viewing relations possible.