Representational Machines

About the book

Photography does not represent space. Space is produced photographically.

Since its inception in the 19th century, photography has brought to light a vast array of represented subjects. Always situated in some spatial order, photographic representations have been operatively underpinned by social, technical, and institutional mechanisms. Geographically, bodily, and geometrically, the camera has positioned its subjecst in social structures and hierachies, in recognizable localities, and in iconic depth constructions which, although they show remarkable variation, nevertheless belong specifically to the enterprises of the medium.

This is the subject of Representational Machines: How photography enlists the workings of institutional technologies in search of establishing new iconic and social spaces. Together, the contributions to this edited volume span historical epochs, social environments, technological possibilities, and genre distinctions. Presenting several distinct ways of producing space photographically, this book opens a new and important field of inquiry for photography research.

Table of contents

The Magic Box of the Picturesque: Anticipating Photographic Space in Benzelstjernas's "Daguerreotyp-Panorama" 1840

The "Camera-Medusa": Stereoscopic Photographs of Statuettes

The Production of Socialist Space: A Photographic Archive of the Leipzig Fair

Writing with the Photograph: Espacement, Description and an Architectural Text in Action

Photographic Space

Televising Inner Space: Lennart Nilsson's Early Medical Documentaries on the Interior of the Human Body

A Photographic Archive of Physics, or a Physical Archive of Photography? Niels Bohr and the Photographic Production of Scientific Space(s)

The Album as Site

Mobile Monitoring: Self-tracking in Counter-surveillance Art

The Emancipating Machine