Description
Book SynopsisLight and Photomedia proposes that, regardless of technological change, the history and future of photomedia is essentially connected to light. It is a fundamental property of photomedia, binding with space and time to form and inform new, explicitly light-based structures and experiences. Jai McKenzie identifies light-space-time structures throughout the history of photomedia, from the early image machines through analogue and digital image machines to the present day. She proposes that they will continue to develop in the future and takes us to future image machines of the year 2039. With the use of the theories of Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard and Vilem Flusser, featuring artists including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nam June Paik, Yves Klein, Eadweard Muybridge, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman and Michael Snow, as well as their photographic images, Light and Photomedia places the reader in a new history and future which, although mostly overlooked by the canon of photomedia theory, is an essential line of enquiry for contemporary thinking and dialogue in photography.
Trade Review'Jai McKenzie's Light and Photomedia is an important reflection on the very conditions of seeing in our world today. By understanding photomedia not through subject matter and technology, but as light-space-time, we recognise reality for what it is: negotiable and vibrant.' -Olafur Eliasson, artist 'Bringing together various pasts and some foreseeable futures, this book offers a considered two-hundred-year survey of 'light writing', from the beginnings of photography through to the year 2039.'-Amelia Groom, critic and curator 'Through the lens of the contemporary and with light as a constant, Jai McKenzie deftly weaves key theoretical references throughout her timeline to construct a fascinating history and possible future of our image-world.'- Laura McLean, writer and curator
Table of ContentsList of illustrationsIntroductionChapter 1Early image machinesThe invention of photography c.1830—c.1870Luminous beginningsLight source: the origin of the image machinesA sociological perspectiveLight-space-timeImage-spaceSeeing machinesEver brighter: moving on from the glow of the early image machinesChapter 2Analogue image machinesc.1870—c.1990Super vision: the analogue eraStanding still: the instantaneous capture of light-timeMoving quickly: Photofuturism and light-timeCinematic light-timeStill and moving light-timeLight-space in the analogue eraYou press the button: forming image-spaces everywhereAt the movies: image-spaces in cinemaProofs of realityPhotomontageVideo artLeap into the voidChapter 3Digital image machinesc.1990—2010Dream machines: technology at the speed of lightImage-spaces of the digital era ‘All that we see or seem’Light up: the screen space of digital photomediaAt the speed of lightSlow motion: light-time in the digital eraVoid spaceDigital photomedia & the loss of physical realityThe digital image-space: a matter of light-space-timeChapter 4Future image machines2039: two hundred years after the invention of photographyThe future?The photomedia technology of tomorrowThe artist of 2039Connected to nothingIn the ‘photographic universe’At the speed of light The future is hereConclusionBibliographyIndex
