"Rewriting the Photographic Image", 2020 – 2022
– 12 Archival Pigment Prints, dimensions variable
– 2-channel slide projection Kodak caroussel
– Table with visual research material
– Artist book with texts and image material
Between 2020 and 2022, Leipzig-based artist Sophia Kesting was invited by FOTOHOFarchiv Salzburg to work with its holdings and to develop strategies for discussing and appropriating historical materials used in the medium of photography.
As the subject matter for her artistic research project, Sophia Kesting does not use those groups of works that are right at the centre of FOTOHOFarchiv's conservational work. Instead, she explores the edges of the collection when she literally twists and turns the images of of a now historic slide archive that was once used to teach photographic technique. By means of artistic, performative interventions, she discusses and reflects on media conditions, brings gender roles to light and questions them.
Research material
Role Models in Photography
- On the Trail of What Teaching Materials Convey in Passing
Text by Christin Müller
During her research in the archive of the FOTOHOF, Sophia Kesting came across a slide collection that no one had considered worthy of attention for quite some time. The artist was invited to study the archive and to develop a new work in response to it. During a tour of the FOTOHOF with Kurt Kaindl - who is a founding member and still part of the team - she noticed numerous slide boxes. When asked, Kurt Kaindl told her about the use of the slides for his teaching, and thus opened up a view into the peripheral areas of the FOTOHOF archiv to Sophia Kesting. A closer look at these more or less forgotten slides led Sophia Kesting to initiate a fundamental and media-reflexive reflection on photography.
Since FOTOHOF was established in 1981, the team has offered courses on the medium of photography. The slide collection was used in Kurt Kaindl's photography courses in the 1980s and 1990s as illustrative material to explain technical and artistic functions of the medium. This collection includes about 5000 slides and several ring binders and came from various sources. Some came from photography companies, such as Lehrbehelf für Fotografie (Teaching Aids for Photography) which slides and explanations that could be ordered from Kodak in the 1980s as well as Nikon Fotoschule dated 1981...
Reenactments