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Exploring the possibility of an imageless photographic practice.
This blog challenges the dominance of the image in photography, exploring what a photographic practice that no longer prioritises the image and the human as its central protagonists might look like. Fundamental to this claim is the contention that photography is no longer restricted to the production of image and its representational capabilities. The project is strategically positioned against a predominant narrative, challenging the widely held assumption of the centrality of the image in photographic practice. Critiquing the predominant image centrality of photography highlights a blind spot and provides an opportunity for this project to expand what our understandings of photographic practice might be.
The “non-photography” theories of François Laruelle (1937) provides a valuable response. For Laruelle, photography becomes a philosophical activity, not a pictorial one. His concept of “non-photography” opens up new notions of photographic practice that are no longer based in conventional forms, but rather as sites of theoretical speculation. Laruelle rejects the “real” as a starting point for thinking about photography. Non-philosophy, on which his non-photography is based, argues for a reorientation of thought and philosophy that suspends philosophy’s claims over the real.
Although the artworks referred to here are not attempts to provide an illustration of Laruelle’s concepts, it is shown as experimentation that might have been informed by them. The concepts are purposefully selected as speculative, imaginary, and possible, but not fantastical. They generate conceptual “photo-fictions”, as Laruelle calls them, exploring where they depart from being recognisably photographic, but still conceptually linked. Here, the photo-fictions that are proposed do not claim to be based in the realities of photographic practice. They instead present a notion of photography as a theoretical “science fiction” of photographic practice.
The aim of selecting and showing these artworks is to explore the creation of speculative pieces of photo-fictional forms of photographic practice. They provide possible notions of photographic practice that is no longer reliant on the presentation of photographic imagery.