The Implicated Spectator: Inscribing Oneself Into a Photograph

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Author(s): Wiebke Leister (Royal College of Art, London, UK)
Copyright: 2023
Pages: 11
Source title: Handbook of Research on the Relationship Between Autobiographical Memory and Photography
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Mark Bruce Nigel Ingham (London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK), Nela Milic (London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK), Vasileios Kantas (University of West Attica, Greece), Sara Andersdotter (University for the Creative Arts, Sweden)and Paul Lowe (London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-5337-7.ch016

Keywords: Art and Design / Computer Graphics & Art / Information Science Reference / Media & Communications

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Abstract

This chapter speculates about photographs that act as potential fields of projection, inviting imaginary processes through which a sense of otherness and lived experience enters into the image. Processes through which the photograph becomes other-than-itself. Using a performative style of writing, the essay directs questions at its readers to involve them into a conversation about viewing photographs as mental, remembered, and imaginary images alike. Actual photographs are reinterpreted by inscribing them with internalized images. Expanded self-portraits are moulded and contextualized with latent images stored in our visual memory. The chapter argues that these kinds of non-referential photographs are simultaneously imbued with seemingly paradoxical faculties—object-ness and image-ness, here-ness and there-ness, now-ness and then-ness—which can be used to test the attachability and elasticity of the image.

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