Niklas Luhman states that “topics are an inevitable requirement of communication. They constitute the external reference in communication.” Topics, it seems, are an inevitable requirement of photography too. Yet surely art can add something to this. Modernity despised external reference, post-modernity worshipped it. And what about today? What can photography communicate beyond the actual picture? Or rather: where does reductionist photography begin?
Volume 1 in the series “Rethinking Photography” is a collection of eight artistic and nine theoretical statements focusing on the two opposites “narration” and “reduction” and demanding “artistic autonomy” distinct from the task of “reproducing” (Jäger).