Pro-Photographic Gestures

Joel Anderson and Wiebke Leister: 'Pro-Photographic Gestures'

This essay suggests that both Roland Barthes and Vilém Flusser were interested in accounts of the ‘pro-photographic’ – those acts that are occurring in the slice of the world that is placed in front of the camera eye before it becomes ‘image’. Its mise-en-scène.
The essay describes the photographer ‘at work’. It looks at forms of posing in and as acts of photographing that constantly change through the invention of new technologies and apparatuses, the use of mobile phones and digital cameras that never miss a shot, show ‘results’ on the spot and offer ‘editing’ as part of its many functions. Snapshots of people with cameras in different situations, with the quality of anecdotal ready-mades, mapping that performative space between the photographer and his or her object, by an observer looking onto that scene.

In: special issue: Joel Anderson and Wiebke Leister (eds): ‘The Theatre of Photography’, Journal of Photography & Culture, Summer 2018

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