Category: Volume 28 – Number 2 – January 2018
Notes on Contributors
October 20, 2020 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 28, Number 2, January 2018 |
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Lily Cho is Associate Professor in the Department of English at York University. She has published essay on vernacular photography in Interventions, Citizenship Studies, and Photography and Culture. Her current project, Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens, looks at identification photography as a technology through which racialized migrants are excluded from […]
Reading Under a Big Tent
October 20, 2020 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 28, Number 2, January 2018 |
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Megan Ward (bio)Oregon State University A review of Whitson, Roger. Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Digital Humanities: Literary Retrofuturisms, Media Archaeologies, Alternate Histories. Routledge, 2017. The field of digital humanities has had a contentious relationship with the idea of the “big tent,” or a widely inclusive approach that embraces a variety of disciplines, methodologies, and theories. On […]
“This thick and fibrous now”
October 20, 2020 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 28, Number 2, January 2018 |
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Thangam Ravindranathan (bio)Brown University A review of Haraway, Donna. Manifestly Haraway, U of Minnesota P, 2016 and Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke UP, 2016. Published a few months apart, Manifestly Haraway (April 2016) and Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (September 2016) together attest to the unique, […]
The Existential Drama of Capital
October 20, 2020 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 28, Number 2, January 2018 |
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Christian Haines (bio)Dartmouth College A review of McGowan, Todd. Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets. Columbia UP, 2016. In Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets, Todd McGowan offers a perverse starting point for the critique of capitalism: not the injustices and inequalities produced by capital accumulation, nor the repressiveness […]
Media Portfolios after Credit Scoring:Attention, Prediction, and Advertising in Indian Media Networks
October 20, 2020 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 28, Number 2, January 2018 |
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Akshaya Kumar (bio)Indian Institute of Technology, Indore Abstract Studying the reconfiguration of the film economy after the rise of satellite television, this essay draws upon media history in South Asia to tease out the repackaging of stardom in a changing media ecosystem, which commands the celebrity function to be more flexible and more willing to […]
Can curation free the anthology? Giorgio Agamben’s apparatus and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing
October 20, 2020 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 28, Number 2, January 2018 |
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Isabelle Parkinson (bio)Queen Mary, University of London Abstract This article analyzes the failure of Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing (2011) to fulfil the critical action it claims to achieve through curation. Deploying Agamben’s concept of the apparatus, the article looks beyond the editors’ claim that curation enables an avant-garde resistance to the canonizing […]
Agential Orange:Immortal Performatives and Writing with Ashes
October 20, 2020 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 28, Number 2, January 2018 |
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Walter Faro (bio)Pennsylvania State University Abstract This essay is a case study of the author’s late father and his processes of coming to know himself through a relationship with Agent Orange, a deadly and untraceable chemical. In performatively demonstrating the agential forces of nonhuman others at work, the essay troubles idiomatic written forms in order […]
A translation of 曹美贵(Lily Cho), Darkroom Material:Race and the Chromogenic Print Process
October 19, 2020 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 28, Number 2, January 2018 |
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Guanglong Pang (bio)约克大学(York University) 摘要 本文针对暗房技术人员,尤其是被种族化了的暗房技术人员进行思考并展开了有关摄影历史化和理论化的争论。通过对暗房技术人员关键作用的分析来挑战把摄影发展视为仅仅是机械或技术过程的观点。图像制作的过程代表着一段过渡时刻,其照亮了摄影图像总体上的不稳定性,尤其是那些带有种族和侨民色彩的照片。种族化和侨民化的身份是在不断的过渡,分裂和分散的过程中被构造出来。本文聚焦中国人的摄影印刷工艺,探讨了影响摄影技术和工艺的文化历史。本文继而从一个发展过程的角度来理解摄影,揭示了摄影生产和侨民群体构造之间的强大链接。 文本(Text) 改色 改色是我父亲在大多数白天和夜晚所做的事情。这是他继文革时期从古拉格集中营逃出来后在香港等待加拿大入境文件审批期间所学到的技能。这也是他继上世纪70年代在白马市(Whitehorse)所经营的中餐馆香格里拉 (Shangri La) 生意倒闭后一直做的事情。他十分擅长这种暗房工作(我是这样听说的),并且他很幸运地在阿尔伯塔省政府的视听部门找到过一份暗房技术员的工作。他在那里工作的时间超过了十五年, 然而历经省政府策划的一次大规模裁员以及数码摄影的兴起这两大灾难之后(至少对于我们来说是灾难),他永久失去了工作。尽管如此,多年以来,那是他的日常工作。晚上的时候我叔叔会打电话叫我爸爸去他的地方改色。我的叔叔在加拿大阿尔伯塔省埃德蒙顿经营一家小杂货店,而在店面的后面就有一个专业的摄影工作室。摄影工作室对于叔叔来说不仅是生意,更是一份激情。他主要拍摄的是家庭和婚礼照片。他几乎总是忙于这项工作。无论何时何况,人们总是找他拍照。我的阿姨和我的表姐弟们顶着门面经营杂货店。几乎每天晚饭后我爸爸都会接到叔叔的电话叫他去暗房那里帮忙处理和印刷照片。我哥哥和我经常一起去商店玩耍或者帮忙,直到我爸爸工作完毕。人们告诉我,爸爸他在暗房里很有天赋。 这项工作是我日常生活的一部分。我虽然不被允许进入暗房,但我知道那是一个很特殊,很神奇,并充满了工艺和艺术色彩的地方。这是我家庭生活中必不可少的一部分。黛博拉·威利斯(Deborah Willis)主张”摄影为传记”,解释了她对”视觉化记忆”以及对描述黑人生活此类批判性工作的独特见解(22)。关于种族和摄影的思考使我联想到了这段私密的历史,它让我能够永远感受到暗房的魔力,以及改色过程作为摄影的一环完整而分 散的特点 。 暗房又是摄影的一部分。用威利斯的话说,传记可以表现出暗房工作是一个复杂体,也是一个被种族化的、关系到侨民群体的争论点。 本文将对暗房进行理论阐述。在此过程中,本文把暗房视为一个生成空间,借此理解种族和摄影之间的关系。暗房不仅很大程度上在当代的摄影文化批评中缺席,而且它也是一个被常态化了的”白色”空间。仪器、化学品和纸张都是依据白色为参照物校准的。 “世纪中叶的电影是由白人技术人员设计,并根据白色皮肤进行优化的” (彼得斯Peters 65)。当时电影对色彩的敏感性和处理标准导致深色皮肤的受镜者在阴影或深色背景的图像中被扭曲或者隐形。思瑞塔·麦克法登(Syreeta McFadden)讲述了黑人摄影师如何”教会摄像机”看到黑色皮肤: 通过经验,我们适应了电影技术——模拟技术和数字技术——而这些技术并没有适应我们。我们通过确保被拍摄物体在光照下处于良好的位置来弥补胶片乳液固有的缺陷;我们购买更加昂贵的镜头来允许更大的光圈范围,确保我们在拍摄期间能够最大化的引入光照;我们购买速度更快的专业级胶片,或者使用仅限于在室内荧光灯或者钨丝灯条件下拍摄的特殊胶片。我们接受了白人摄影指导员的糟糕建议,让我们在牙齿和皮肤上添加凡士林,或者使用与我们的肤色不匹配的光敏化妆品。 有时,这些约束会生产出美丽的作品。例如罗伊·迪卡瑞瓦 (Roy DeCarava), 这是一位对胶片和种族光学的不足作出回应的摄影师。他在他的照片中占据低色调范围,且不用曝光或显影来补偿。《纽约时报》评论家维姬·戈德堡(Vicki Goldberg)形容迪卡瑞瓦的照片为柔和而阴郁,”令人困惑的黑色,弥漫着沉静” (肯尼迪Kennedy)。科尔(Cole)曾说过:”相反于试图点亮黑色,迪卡瑞瓦违背了人们的期望,选择让黑色愈发黑暗。黑色既不是空白的,也不是空虚的。事 实上,它充满了智慧的光泽,只要耐心观察,它就会光芒四射 (Known and Strange 147).(彼得斯Peters 65-66) 迪卡瑞瓦凭借着在影像设置中对黑人的偏见制作了一系列些美丽的图片。直到20世纪70年代末,柯达才推出了一款名为”黄金Max”的胶卷,它提高了对深色色调的感光性。 长期以来,黑人摄影师一直在努力解决摄影和种族之间的矛盾。身为艺术家和作家的米歇尔·皮尔森克拉克(Michèle Pearson Clarke)在可可褐(Coco Fusco)关于摄影分化种族的著名言论的影响下观察到,”摄影…从没怎么记录过黑色世界的现实,相反却构建了一种我们想要观察黑色的方式 (2)。因为种族歧视深深地嵌入在摄影实践的历史中,克拉克认为我们很难能够以正确的方式来观察黑色: 这种故意编造黑人形象的档案已经存在了175年。这对于对任何当代摄影师来说都是一个巨大的障碍。当我看到任何一张拍摄黑色躯体的照片时,或者想象任何人看到我自己的照片时,我会深刻地意识到这种档案的存在,它就像一个厚厚的滤镜,模糊和复杂化了视野。(3) 克拉克和可可褐想必记得肖恩·米歇尔·史密斯(Shawn Michelle Smith)曾在论述中揭示摄影行业、生物种族主义和优生学交织产生的遗产,以及一种相应而生的”新型视觉真理的社会层次结构 (史密斯Smith 4)。对于克拉克来说, 正是黑人摄影师的工作实践, 特别是蒂娜·劳森(Deana Lawson)、大武·贝(Dawoud Bey)、玛拉·格林(Myra Greene)、鲁托娅·卢比·法力茨(LaToya Ruby Frazier)、 […]
Darkroom Material:Race and the Chromogenic Print Process
October 19, 2020 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 28, Number 2, January 2018 |
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Lily Cho (bio)York University Abstract This essay argues for the need to historicize and theorize race in photography by attending to the interventions of darkroom technicians, especially those who are themselves racialized. Understanding the crucial role of the darkroom technician challenges the idea that photographic development is merely a mechanical or technical process. The photograph […]