Beyond Indexicality, 2020

online exhibition for LocateArts

“A rich tradition of aesthetic theory claims that film and photography are inescapably indexical. 

Indexicality names the phenomenon of an object inscribing itself onto a surface and leaving a mark—evidence of its past presence. This mark—footprint in mud, fingerprint on a document—is an index. In film photography, light traveling through a lens and onto the sensitive emulsion-covered surface leaves a latent image from the moment the shutter was triggered, linking the aesthetic object to its referent in the world and preserving that referent in the image.

But the photographs and films that I have selected for this dossier force a reconsideration of the purported logic of indexicality. These works disorient the familiar indexical framework by foregrounding process and duration, a kaleidoscope of spaces, moments, and encounters. If we follow the insights of philosopher Ariella Azoulay in the Civil Contract of Photography, we see how attachment to indexicality stills in amber what is in fact dynamic and ongoing, evidence of the encounter between artist and object, image and us, a dynamism the work here puts on display…”

Artists Featured: Diane Fox, Coriana Close, Jonathan Rattner, James Lam Scheuren