18th May 2016 5:00pm-6:00pm
M2 Boardroom, Grand Parade
Some remarks on the Visual Essay as method
Naomi Salaman
On the first page of WAYS OF SEEING (1972), a ‘Note to the reader’ makes plain its radical commitments, in particular the conviction that: The book consists of seven numbered essays. They can be read in any order. Four of the essays use words and images, three of them use only images. These purely pictorial essays (on ways of seeing women and on various contradictory aspects of the tradition of the oil painting) are intended to raise as many questions as the verbal essays.
The book consists of seven numbered essays. They can be read in any order. Four of the essays use words and images, three of them use only images. These purely pictorial essays (on ways of seeing women and on various contradictory aspects of the tradition of the oil painting) are intended to raise as many questions as the verbal essays.
How are these visual sequences to be ‘read’? How do they raise questions? While framed by densely illustrated written essays, which the visual sequences take meaning from, they are not defined by them nor do they illustrate the written chapters in any conventional way.
In this talk I consider the problems posed by the visual chapters in WAYS OF SEEING, as a potential method and exhibition format in contemporary art. I sketch a historical and intellectual context informed by Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin and André Malraux, and connect this context to moments of my own practice as well as more well known contemporaries such as Patrick Keiller, Wolfgang Tillmans, Hans Haacke, Joseph Kosuth and Fred Wilson.
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The Arts and Humanities Research Forum (AHRF) is a research forum for staff and students in the University’s Arts and Humanities College generated by the Doctoral College and the Centre for Research and Development. The AHRF is a fortnightly event series open to all research students and staff as well as open to the public as audience members. The forum provides a regular facilitative context in which researchers can trial or rehearse research designs, argue for and justify appropriate methodological approaches and frameworks, and debate theory/practice relationships in their studies.
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