Multiperspective approach towards photography as a nomadic device and photographs as mobile objects of circulation.
From its introduction in the early nineteenth century and through ongoing technical developments, photography has been a mobile medium closely tied to equipment, social conditions and cultural framings. The volume Nomadic Camera investigates the technical, medial and aesthetic relationship between photography and displacement in historical and contemporary perspectives. The contributing authors adopt the term ‘nomadic’ – signifying a transitory form of existence – to explore photography beyond static concepts of being and national boundaries. Viewing photography as a formative part of this history of mobility and migration, the book explores the interplay between the concepts of the ‘nomadic’ and the ‘camera’, offering new perspectives on photography as a medium on the move. The interdisciplinary contributions approach this topic from various angles. They examine photographic tools and technologies; investigate the role of bodies, agents, and performative acts in photographic practices; explore how photography constructs and conveys narratives of movement; and address issues of image circulation, archiving, and memory.
Table of Contents:
Introduction. Nomadic Camera: Photography, Displacement and Dis:connectivities
Burcu Dogramaci, Winfried Gerling, Jens Jäger and Birgit Mersmann
Section 1. Techniques and Technologies
Chapter 1. Fugitive Heat: Notes on Richard Mosse’s Thermal Images
Winfried Gerling
Chapter 2. Reflections on Photography and ‘Flight’ : Encounters with Human and More-than-Human Lives in Transit
Noemi Quagliati
Chapter 3. The Nomadic Camera as a Given Camera : Concepts in Documentaries on Flight and Migration
Florian Krautkrämer
Chapter 4. “A still image with a little bit of life to it” : Towards a Migratory Aesthetic of Smartphone Photography
Svea Braeunert
Chapter 5. In Transition: Nomadic Cameras, Displaced Photographers and Migratory Images
Burcu Dogramaci
Section 2. Body, Agents and Performativity
Chapter 6. Albert Frisch and the Representation of the Body in Visual Narratives of Early Amazonian Photography
Sabrina Moura
Chapter 7. “I am not migrating to the USA” : Performing Migrancy in Paulo Nazareth’s Notícias de América
Lara Bourdin
Chapter 8. Acting for Those We Left Behind : The Performance and Exchange of Family Photographs by Guest Workers in Denmark in the 1970s
Mette Sandbye
Chapter 9. A Conversation with Fatimah M. Dadzie on Her Documentary Fati’s Choice (Le choix de Fati) (Ghana, South Africa, 2021)
Winfried Gerling and Jens Jäger
Chapter 10. The Nomadic Camera and Digital Visual Journalism : Ethical Considerations in the Making
Evelyn Runge
Section 3. Media Narrations and Narratives
Chapter 11. The Camera in the Service of Humanism and the Legacies of Neorealism
Fabienne Liptay
Chapter 12. Weaponised Environments: From the Migrant Image to the Media of Causes
T. J. Demos
Chapter 13. Unfolding Postmigrant Stories : Narratives of Resettlement and Homemaking in Tammy Law’s Photobook Permission to Belong
Birgit Mersmann
Chapter 14. Nomadic Photography: Jeff Moore’s Lockdown London Homeless Project
Christina Tente
Chapter 15. The Registry of Itinerant Architectures
Ainslie Murray
Section 4. Circulation, Archive and Memory
Chapter 16. Captured Reality: Oba Ovonramwen and the Benin Bronzes
Stefanie Michels
Chapter 17. “Nowhere in Africa”? German-Jewish Experiences of Migration and Exile in Kenya: A Family Photo Album
Anna Sophia Messner
Chapter 18. The METROMOD Archive as a “Living Archive” : Researching Exile Photography in New York in the 1930s and 1940s
Helene Roth
Chapter 19. The Israeli Government Press Office Photography Department : A Case Study on Photographic Action in the Middle East
Annette Vowinckel
Chapter 20. “Salam azizam, chetori?”: Nomadic Family Photographs in the Iranian Diaspora
Cathrine Bublatzky
Chapter 21. Moving Archives and Liquid Time : The Work of Photographs in an Age of Decomposition
Elizabeth Edwards
Biographies of the Authors
About the Author :
Burcu Dogramaci is Professor of Art History and Director of the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
Winfried Gerling is Professor of Concepts and Aesthetics of New Media in the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam where he works in the European Media Studies Program jointly run with the University of Potsdam.
Jens Jäger is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cologne.
Birgit Mersmann is Professor of Contemporary Art and Digital Image Cultures at the University of Bonn.
Review :
This collection of essays drawing from history, media studies, art, art history, and ethnology offers a thoughtful analysis of the “nomadic camera” in the context of migration, flights, and displacements. The nomadic camera understood as both a tool to record and a concept to reflect upon migration complicates the usual narrative we have of migration, but also of photography. - Laurence Cuelenaere, cultural anthropologist and photographer
In our challenging age of global migrations, displacements, and exiles, this book is a very timely publication. Opening a broad spectrum from documentation and tourism to surveillance and warfare, its contributions map a wide range of photographic practices. In rich ways, they nuance our understanding of social realms that are shaped by the camera; and they do so in a truly global perspective. Photography may capture fleeting moments and arrest them in time. Technologies, people, images, and meaning, however, remain a nomadic matter. This essay collection represents an indispensable point of departure for all who are interested in such mobilities. - Steffen Siegel, Folkwang University of the Arts
