| | | |  | | | | Film negative box no. 5 from the Hahne Niehoff Archive © Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | | | | | | Unboxing Photographs. Working in the Photo Archive | | | | 16 February - 27 May, 2018 | | | Opening: Thursday, 15 February, 7pm
An exhibition of the collaborative project "Photo-Objects – Photographs as (Research) Objects in Archaeology, Ethnology and Art History", Photothek des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut / Sammlung Fotografie der Kunstbibliothek und Antikensammlung, both Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz / Institut für Europäische Ethnologie der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, sponsored by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, the Schering Stiftung, and the Verein der Freunde der Antike auf der Museumsinsel Berlin e.V. | | |  | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Unidentified photographer, glass plate negative of a photograph of four robed statues from Magnesia on the Maeander, Western Turkey, 1891 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Antikensammlung | | | | | | | "Unboxing Photographs. Working in the Photo Archive" opens the boxes of four photo archives to showcase the material diversity of photographs as three-dimensional objects: from glass plate negatives, to 35 mm film, to prints on albumen or silver gelatin paper. These photo-objects are taken in the hand, tilted and turned over, labeled, cut down, framed, glued into albums, printed, and dispatched or posted online. Contact and inventory sheets, cardboard mounts, card catalogs, and today even display screens are integral parts of the photo-object, or even constitute it. | | | | | |  | | | Unidentified photographer, Vase with coat of arms of the Corsini-Medici
transparency on cardboard mount, without date
© Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut | | | | | | | Since the 19th century, archaeologists, ethnologists, and art historians have worked with photographs and assembled them in archives. There, they are processed and ordered – and only through such treatment do they become usable as documents for scholarly research. These procedures alter the physical properties of photographs and leave behind material traces. Photographs, hence, are neither objective nor timeless. By taking them seriously as objects, and not just as pictures, it becomes possible to tell their multifarious stories. The exhibition interrogates the commonly practiced and disciplinary conventions that govern the perception and presentation of photographs – for example museum display using passepartouts – and tries out new design possibilities. Work with photo-objects is also central to the artistic interventions of JUTOJO, Ola Kolehmainen, Joachim Schmid, Elisabeth Tonnard, and Akram Zaatari, all of which have been integrated into the exhibition. | | | | | |  | | | Unidentified photographer, Eight Mirror Frames, silver gelatin paper on cardboard, estate of Elia Volpi, circa 1900
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