ReadingGroupSession2

Session Two

Outcome continue annotation of:

The Burden of Representation

Essays on Photographies and Histories

John Tagg (1988)

https://pad.xpub.nl/p/ReadingSession1Pad

Please download if you want to read through the text before hand.

https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/?sort=new&data=root

Steve will bring printouts to the session

We will begin reading at P.34, Chapter One.

Question specific to this text: Does photography record a subject or produce a subject?

Questions that might help with the group annotation during the session (this builds on the methods you used in the last methods session with Natasha):

What is 'mode of address'?

How does this text speak to you as a reader?

How is this text in conversation with other texts?

What thoughts do you have about the structure of the text?

What in particular, for you, situates this text in the 1980s?

How would a 21st century text approach the issues raised in the text?

What other comments, thoughts, questions, do you have on/about this text?

Notes from last session: In this chapter Tagg charts the 'democratisation' of the image along with the industrialisation of the image in the second half of the 19thC. Tagg will bring in ideas from Foucault (technologies of self); Marxism (hegemony, class) and Cultural Studies (information theory, structuralism). We discussed how Foucault's ideas became influential throughout the 70s and after. Applied to photography, writers such as Tagg(The Burden of Representation) and Crarey (Techniques of the Observer) looked at photography as an instrument of discourse of power; whereby the technologies of photography created subject positions; that photography was instrumental in the production of modern forms of subjectivity.

Plan next session: members of the group choose a text for next session.

Session One

Steve will give an overview of three texts and will outline how they each discuss photography as a 'technology of the self'

1) The Burden of Representation Essays on Photographies and Histories , John Tagg (1988)

2) Objectivity, Lorraine Daston & Peter Galison, (2007)

3 ) Duty Free Art Hito Steyerl” (2017)

Following Steve's intro, we we will read a portion of the text and then add our own notes and observations on a pad. We will also discuss how our reading of photography has changed over the 4 decades these texts were written. We will also note the comparisons and differences between the texts. You can extend this method to your own chosen texts in subsequent sessions.

This session is a response to requests for time to be set aside for reading. It is not compulsory, but all are welcome.

https://pad.xpub.nl/p/ReadingSession1Pad