Author: Lisa Saltzman
Source: Arts 2023, 12(4), 163;
Publication Type: Journal Article
Abstract: This essay, which reframes elements of my 2015 book, Daguerreotypes: Fugitive Subjects, Contemporary Objects, returns to the lacuna at the heart of Roland Barthes鈥檚 reflections on photo-graphy: the so-called 鈥淲inter Garden鈥 photograph of his mother as a little girl. An image that is lovingly conjured but forever withheld, this photograph is the fulcrum of a theory of photography that emerged from the conjunction of mourning and desire. For Barthes, and all those working in his wake, the absent photograph is something of photography鈥檚 primal scene. With attention to the work of Eve Sussman and Simon Lee, their 2011 three-channel HD video Wintergarden and her 2018 NFT 89 Seconds Atomized in particular, this essay takes readers 鈥渂ack to the garden鈥 to think about the time of early photography. To do so, this essay considers a range of contemporary videos that mine and mime the conventions of photography to produce static, durational encounters with stillness in a medium that is anything but, ultimately, revealing the truths and fictions of photography鈥檚 founding moment and fundamental logic.
History of Art
