The publication is a result of the interdisciplinary seminar “Cultures of Photography. (Post)colonial Archives and Photography in Africa and South Asia” which took place during the summer semester of 2016 and was accompanied by two workshops. The first workshop was held at the Museum Folkwang in Essen and at Duisburg-Essen University and the second workshop brought the scholars to the Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies (HCTS). The seminar as well as the publications are part of a cooperation between Dr. Cathrine Bublatzky from the Chair of Visual and Media Anthropology at the Cluster “Asia and Europe” and Kerstin Meincke from the Chair of Art History and Theory at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
The seminar brought together students from three institutions – the Universities of Heidelberg and Duisburg-Essen and the Folkwang University of Arts – and three academic disciplines: art history, photography and visual anthropology. Following a research-based concept, the seminar groups focused on the theoretical discussion of historical and contemporary photographic positions and projects in Asia and Africa that are closely related to urban space and notions of modernity, freedom, and liberalism. In addition, specific media implications, materialities, and photographic practices were also discussed upon in workshops, talks and seminar discussions.
The visual essays are published on Atomic Wiki with the support of the Heidelberg Research Architecture (HRA), the digital humanities department at the Cluster "Asia and Europe".
Dr. Cathrine Bublatzky is Associate Professor at the Chair of Visual and Media Anthropology at the Cluster “Asia and Europe”.
Dipl. des. Kerstin Meincke is part of the research project "Anachronie und Präsenz: Ästhetische Wahrnehmung und künstlerische Zeitlichkeitkeitskonzepte" at University of Duisburg-Essen.
Read the essays here: Cultures of Photography