Vernaculars: Essays on the History of Photography.
The Point of Day| N° d'inventaire | 31266 |
| Format | 16 x 22 |
| Détails | 192 p., numerous photographs, paperback. |
| Publication | Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, 2024 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782493674029 |
What do a photographer trying to capture ghosts, an experimenter trying to record his thoughts by placing a sensitive plate on his forehead, a fairground operator, a darkroom magician, a few merry amateurs, a few reflection hunters, and anonymous producers of enigmatic images have in common ? Nothing, except their belonging to that vast, still insufficiently studied photographic category: the vernacular. Vernacular photography is most often applied or functional, that is, utilitarian. The family is one of its main sites of production or circulation; it is therefore also domestic. Above all, it is situated outside of what has been deemed most worthy of interest by the bodies of cultural legitimacy. It develops on the periphery of what is a reference, counts, and carries weight in the artistic sphere. It is the other of art, but it is precisely for this reason that it has interested the avant-garde and continues to be looked at by many artists using photography. As a conscientious historian, but not without delight, Clément Chéroux returns in this work to some of these forgotten vernacular practices. They become so many opportunities to question photography: should we (or not) believe in images, how can we blind ourselves by looking at them, what is an amateur, what is the photographic unconscious of Georges Méliès's cinema, do fairground photographers have the power to change life by changing the scenery, what was Eugène Atget's true activity, why did documentary images have the value of ecstasy for the surrealists?
What do a photographer trying to capture ghosts, an experimenter trying to record his thoughts by placing a sensitive plate on his forehead, a fairground operator, a darkroom magician, a few merry amateurs, a few reflection hunters, and anonymous producers of enigmatic images have in common ? Nothing, except their belonging to that vast, still insufficiently studied photographic category: the vernacular. Vernacular photography is most often applied or functional, that is, utilitarian. The family is one of its main sites of production or circulation; it is therefore also domestic. Above all, it is situated outside of what has been deemed most worthy of interest by the bodies of cultural legitimacy. It develops on the periphery of what is a reference, counts, and carries weight in the artistic sphere. It is the other of art, but it is precisely for this reason that it has interested the avant-garde and continues to be looked at by many artists using photography. As a conscientious historian, but not without delight, Clément Chéroux returns in this work to some of these forgotten vernacular practices. They become so many opportunities to question photography: should we (or not) believe in images, how can we blind ourselves by looking at them, what is an amateur, what is the photographic unconscious of Georges Méliès's cinema, do fairground photographers have the power to change life by changing the scenery, what was Eugène Atget's true activity, why did documentary images have the value of ecstasy for the surrealists?