'Shape Shifting' delivered in the panel 'Complicating the Picture intersections of Photography with Print since 1990' convened by Jimin Lee and Ruth Pelzer-Montada.
As an artist I have often used altered photographs, from newspapers or archives; copying, cropping, puncturing, sanding and otherwise interfering with the physical nature of the reprinted image. I also observe amongst students an impetus to transform the photographic image materially by using print, for example, through the deconstruction of CYMK processes. Digital print in this case adopts procedures from lithography.
I sense a relationship between these practices of re-materialization and broader questions of materiality which I believe have been altered by our increasing immersion in digital media.
Do such responses confirm the heralded ‘death’ of print or are they a sign of its re-emergence? In what ways may the digital open up the theoretical debate concerning print while extending the discourse around photography? I will explore these questions through the example of my own and students’ work with reference to writings by Roland Barthes, Hito Steyerl and Lucia Maholy.