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In Blog, Blog 2024

De facto border. The division of Cyprus in contemporary photography by Heinrich Völkel

samira yildirim

This essay deals with the question of how artists show and document the topography and landscape of a border. Since the end of the 20th century, borders have been developed into a global network of ‘sorting machines’ in which integration, separation and transfer take place.[1] Artists conduct artistic field research along borders and with their works of art capture artificial divisions, politically negotiated and often militarily guarded barriers of the world. Art is, therefore, part of the practice and research of topography, which is made up of the Greek words tópos for place and gráphein for drawing or writing, referring to the description, measurement and representation of a place. Although we see the green and built borders in the images, they simultaneously disappear through their reification, as we aesthetically experience representations of water, sand, mountains, trees, rivers, meadows, cities, villages, roads, traffic routes and infrastructures, which in turn is antithetical to the knowledge of the violence of borders. The Mediterranean plays an important role as a border because it is much more than just a tourist destination for holidaymakers, but also a geopolitically relevant location of the EU’s external border regime. Fortress Europe marks its border to the south in the Mediterranean with various counterparts, and it is being successively expanded and upgraded, making it a constant source of conflict. The absurdity of carving a constructed border into natural topography is clearly illustrated by the sea. Broad and deep waters are already insurmountable hurdles for us humans. Declaring them political borders plays into the hands of states, as no border architectures are required here to demarcate one territorial state from another. At the same time, maritime borders have the advantage of appearing natural, which makes them ‘less vulnerable to attack’.[2] As a border, the Mediterranean is complex and controversial, as the Mediterranean space is formed in the past and future primarily through its relationships, as Fernand Braudel pointed out in his extensive La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II in 1949.[3] This incongruity between political, cultural and social connections and divisions is the subject of numerous contemporary artists who analyse the Mediterranean as a hybrid border region.

Camera view of absences

OSTKREUZ — a Berlin-based photographers’ cooperative — produced Über Grenzen in Berlin and Dresden in 2012.[4] Through the medium of photography, the members of the cooperative approached social questions about borders, clarifying that borders inscribe themselves onto everyday life and humans’ living spaces as well as onto nature. They can take on military, social, architectural and ethical forms. The topography of a border can never be captured in its entirety and remains fragmented in the images. A line on a map can depict the entire course of a border. The topographical works, on the other hand, present very limited and individual perspectives. Heinrich Völkel is a member of OSTKREUZ and integrated motifs of deserted streets, abandoned buildings, UN observation posts and a dilapidated airport into his photo series The Green Line. These are places that separate Northern Cyprus from the Republic of Cyprus. The Green Line, a buffer zone established by the United Nations Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964, is intended to maintain a ceasefire and covers around three per cent of the island. The zone stretches from east to west, shrinks to six metres wide in the capital Nicosia and widens to seven kilometres elsewhere. It separates the Turkish Cypriot north from the Greek Cypriot south. The buffer zone passed through three stages of escalation and isolation.[5] Between 1955 and 1963 there was the so-called ‘Mason-Dixon line’ — barriers between the Greek and Turkish neighbourhoods. British colonisation of the island ended in 1959 with Treaties of London and Zürich Agreements, thanks to which Cyprus gained sovereignty. The second stage of the escalation took place in December 1963, with serious riots that led to a ceasefire agreement and the physical barrier of the Green Line — a semi-open cordon with checkpoints and the ability to close certain areas in the event of conflict. After the Greek military coup and the subsequent occupation of the north by Turkish military forces in the summer of 1974, the buffer zone was closed and fortified, representing the continuing third stage. On 15 November 1983, the parliament of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus proclaimed its independence, which is not recognised by any UN member except Turkey. As a result, the island’s internal border has been a de facto and not a de jure border since 1974. Attempts at reunification have failed and have no prospect of success. Borders of this kind are provisional and permanent sources of conflict.

Fig. 1: Heinrich Völkel: UN buffer zone, Airport Lefkosia, Nicosia, 2012. A former international airport with the decommissioned Hawker Siddeley Trident of Cyprus Airways. The airport was between the fronts during the fighting and has been closed ever since. Photo from The Green Line series. Copyright Heinrich Völkel/Ostkreuz

Heinrich Völkel took photographs in deserted villages, in Nicosia and its natural surroundings in the border area. Völkel sought traces of the island’s partition. The pictures show barricaded streets and rooms lined with barbed wire and loopholes as well as a green mountain ridge, which is named as a UN observation post in the title of OSTKREUZ’s picture.[6] The border between the north and south appears in all the pictures, evoking a formerly united island. The motif of Nicosia International Airport, which ceased operation in 1974 due to the conflict and is now located within the buffer zone, provides an example. In one picture, we see a plane, derelict and gutted, with smashed windows, missing doors, a dirty surface and barbed wire (figure 1). The aircraft belonged to Cyprus Airways and is still parked at the defunct airport in Nicosia. The airline lost two planes and the airport infrastructure as a result of the war. Lakarna military airport in the south, which was expanded in the same year, and Ercan airport in the north have been used since the island’s partition. Another picture shows a waiting room on the airport grounds. The room is dilapidated, the seat cushions and the floor are littered with bird droppings (figure 2). The photographs confirm the absence of something once present. Half a century has passed since the buffer zone was established, and the images show that this provisional and persistent condition has become permanent without resolution. Völkel’s visual language shows that nothing remains of the former coexistence but absence. Constance de Gourcy describes this emptiness and absence as a ‘double presence’, which results in an ambivalent relationship between two sides: […] absence is not only the opposite of presence as might be suggested by the overtaking — which is also a replacement — of the ‘double absence’ by the ‘double presence’, but an institution of meaning which defines a system of places and relational modalities between members geographically distant from a given collective.[7]

Fig. 2: Heinrich Völkel: UN buffer zone, Airport Lefkosia, Nicosia, 2012. Waiting room of the unused airport. Photo from The Green Line series. Copyright Heinrich Völkel/Ostkreuz.

According to De Gourcy, the experience of absence, which inevitably arises through migration and border crossings, is generated by the missing or the stranger and their relationship to the original place across distances.[8] In relation to Cyprus, the absence of each group in the other creates a connection between them. From 1963 onwards, the populations segregated, with Turkish Cypriots relocating to the north and the Greek Cypriots moving south or leaving the island altogether. Evidence of this relocation remains, and Heinrich Völkel focused on the gaps left by this absence. For example, the classroom covered with straw and a blackboard in the centre of the picture with a quote by Kemal Atatürk: ‘Ne mutlu Türküm diyene’ – ‘Happy is the one who calls himself/herself a Turk’ (figure 3). The abandoned school is located in the south and was being used as a cattle shed at the time of the photo. The inscription on the blackboard is an oath that was used in Turkish schools to instil children with Turkish nationalist sentiment.

Fig. 3: Heinrich Völkel: Pitargou, Cyprus (South), 2012. School building of the abandoned Turkish-Cypriot village of Pitargou. Photo from The Green Line series. Copyright Heinrich Völkel/Ostkreuz.

The picture simultaneously documents the former presence of a Turkish Cypriot population in the south as well as a failed multi-ethnic reality that could have obtained in Cyprus after its independence. In the repurposed classroom, Atatürk’s sentence seems like a curse. Völkel’s photographs of the internal Cypriot border not only show the moment when the photograph was taken and the status quo of this border; they also point to a past in which two groups lived in the same place. Heinrich Völkel’s photographic practice is documentary, and he works in series: ‘Only this sorting and arranging approach to the material turns images of non-pictorial realities into documentation’.[9] He conducts field research by capturing places, perspectives and motifs of a topographical border. A single photograph does not seem to do this justice. The images document a moment and, following Barthes, are a repetition of ‘what has been’.[10] In Camera Lucida, Barthes describes the past tense of what is shown: The Photograph is an extended, loaded evidence — as if it caricatured not the figure of what it represents (quite the converse) but its very existence. The image, says phenomenology, is an object-as-nothing. Now, in the Photograph, what I posit is not only the absence of the object; it is also, by one and the same movement, on equal terms, the fact that this object has indeed existed and that it has been there where I see it.[11] In Völkel’s photograph, the past is doubly present: there is the moment of the photograph in which the classroom was used as a cattle shed and the reference to a more distant past of the classroom as a place of teaching and educating Turkish children. Völkel refers to two periods: before and since the division of Cyprus.

The ambivalent character of ‘green borders’

Can a border be everywhere? Border studies since the 1990s have called for a transition from a geopolitical to a biopolitical definition of borders, according to which the focus shifts to people and their perception. Biopolitical borders demand a pluralised view, as Nick Vaughan-Williams, for example, puts it: ‘[B]orders are not natural, neutral nor static but historically contingent, politically charged, dynamic phenomena that first and foremost involve people and their everyday lives’.^[12] Especially when it comes to topographies, borders are a difficult phenomenon to depict, but a fascinating one, as they consist more of practices than of motifs. And yet in art we see the motifs of built architecture, such as walls and fences as well as green borders, such as mountains and seas that are also international borders. In the history of art, the pictorial beauty of landscapes is usually a sign of aesthetic, romantic and sublime observations that offer an impression of nature. The invisibility of borders in landscape images reinforces their ambivalent character and implies the political utilisation of nature. When looking at the pictures, the apparent naturalness of ‘green borders’ is disturbed, as the art reveals political borders in natural settings as constructions. In other words, a border only becomes visible in its function as such in connection with the idea of traversing it. In the case of Cyprus, Heinrich Völkel’s works show that transfer and exchange across the border has been at a standstill for decades.

[1] Steffen Mau, Sortiermaschinen: Die Neuerfindung der Grenze im 21. Jahrhundert (München: C.H. Beck, 2021), 19. [2] Anke Hoffmann, 'Border Sampling – oder von hier nach hier', in Nevin Aladağ. Border Sampling, ed. Matthias Lenz and Regina Michel (Friedrichshafen: Rober Gessler, 2011), 5. This work was published in conjunction with an eponymous exhibition at the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, 21 October–4 December 2011. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by the author. [3] Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’epoque de Philippe II. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1949). [4] OSTKREUZ — Agentur der Fotografen, Über Grenzen = On borders (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012), exhibition catalogue for Über Grenzen, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 9 November – 31 December 2012; Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden, 17 May – 11 August 13. [5] Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth, Divided Cities. Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 123. [6] OSTKREUZ — Agentur der Fotografen, Über Grenzen, 132. [7] Constance De Gourcy, 'The Institutionalization of Absence in the Mediterranean', Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2018, http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/11687. [8] Gourcy, 'The Institutionalization of Absence'. [9]Renate Wöhrer, 'Die Kunst des Dokumentierens. Zur Genealogie der Kategorie "dokumentarisch"', in Beyond evidence. Das Dokument in den Künsten, ed. Daniela Hahn (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2016), 45-57. [10] Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Reflections of Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 85. [11] Barthes, Camera Lucida, 115. ^[12] Nick Vaughan-Williams, Border Politics. The Limits of Sovereign Power (Edinburgh: University Press, 2009), 1.

bibliography

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Reflections of Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Braudel, Fernand. La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’epoque de Philippe II. Paris: Armand Colin, 1949. Calame, Jon and Esther Charlesworth. Divided Cities. Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Gourcy, Constance De. 'The Institutionalization of Absence in the Mediterranean'. Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2018, 1-12. http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/11687. Hoffmann, Anke. 'Border Sampling – oder von hier nach hier'. In Nevin Aladağ. Border Sampling, edited by Matthias Lenz and Regina Michel, Friedrichshafen: Rober Gessler, 2011. Mau, Steffen. Sortiermaschinen: Die Neuerfindung der Grenze im 21. Jahrhundert. München: C.H. Beck, 2021. OSTKREUZ — Agentur der Fotografen. Über Grenzen = On borders. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012. Vaughan-Williams, Nick. Border Politics. The Limits of Sovereign Power. Edinburgh: University Press, 2009. Wöhrer, Renate. 'Die Kunst des Dokumentierens. Zur Genealogie der Kategorie "dokumentarisch"'. In Beyond evidence. Das Dokument in den Künsten, edited by Daniela Hahn, Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2016.

citation information:

Yildirim, Samira, 'De facto border. The division of Cyprus in contemporary photography by Heinrich Völkel', Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, 5 November 2024, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/11/05/de-facto-border-the-division-of-cyprus-in-contemporary-photography-by-heinrich-volkel/.

5 November 2024

In Blog, Blog 2024

Odyssey of oblivion: a chronicle of displacement from the Kerkennah Islands

rim harmessi

Was not the earth of God spacious enough for you to emigrate therein? ^[1]

Since 2020, I have frequented Kerkennah Islands — my mother’s homeland — to document illegal migrants’ attempts to reach Europe and follow the traces of their journeys. As destitution drove migrants to a distant shore, the archipelago became a harbour for human trafficking and corpses tainted its beaches with the stench of death.^[2]

The Kerkennah Islands

The Kerkennah Islands, located off the coast of Tunisia, have gained notoriety as a transit point for illegal immigration. African migrants converge here, united in the pursuit of a better life in Italy or Malta along the Central Mediterranean route (CMR).^[3] The CMR claims hundreds of lives each year, accounting for more than 90 per cent of deaths in the Mediterranean in 2016.^[4] Tunisia is bearing the brunt of this tragedy, with 729 deaths in 2023. The majority of which occurred off the coasts of Sfax (349) and Kerkennah (140).^[5]

A different view on migration

Being from the island, it has always held a primal allure for me. I envision it as a place of genesis where generations of mothers reach back to the source: the first mother and universal woman. Instinctively, the only compelling commentary on what was taking place on its shores lay in the voices and experiences of women. And while the hardship of the crossing is shared by all who attempt it, the gender-based vulnerability makes it riskier for women, who make up half the world's refugees and are disproportionately susceptible to abuse. UN statistics reveal that 60 per cent of preventable maternal deaths occur in humanitarian settings, and an estimated one in five refugee or displaced women have endured sexual violence.^[6] Personal narratives in the form of documentary photography have helped tackle migration issues. Images of people with distinct names and faces, crying mothers in the chaos of capsized vessels and lifeless babies washing ashore next to striped parasols are potent tools for fundraising and policy-reform appeals. But is there a different approach in the same medium, one that would resonate with equal force. My work explores the narratives beyond immediate emotional effects. The focus shifts from ‘the displaced woman’ as a singular entity to the concept of displacement and how women actually experience it. These faceless figures embody the collective experience, and the lack of identification reflects the marginalisation that migrants face as their identities are replaced with the ‘Migrant Persona’.

Imperfections as narrative

Analogue photography is the medium that gives this project its voice. Shot primarily in the Kerkennah Islands, the work embraces the imperfections inherent in 35mm film. Scratches, light leaks, missing frames, faded hues and occasional blurs all complement the themes of absence that permeate the narrative. Further amplifying this concept are deliberate technical and chemical manipulations. Double and triple exposures, premature stops, bleaching, burning, etc. emphasise erosion and erasure, implying a sense of discontinuity. This exploration extends beyond the captured image. Collage and textual footnotes are also visual elements suggesting that absences define the Mediterranean as a fluid border. My aim is to transcend mere documentation, for it is insufficient to understand the psychological complexities of flight. I aspire to unveil and reimagine the feminine migration journey from the islands where I took the photographs. In four chapters, each echoing a specific location, emotional state and pivotal step in this odyssey, the narrative unfolds in a linear fashion, mimicking a traveller's physical journey. A fixed point of departure contrasts with the open-ended unknown in every clandestine voyage.

Chapter 1 LAND: SCENES FROM THE ISLAND

The first chapter depicts the point of departure. Earthy tones dominate the scenes, evoking a sense of connection to one's roots. These are not the perfect vistas commonly associated with Kerkennah, the vibrant tourist destination. Instead, the focus shifts to the marginalised scenery, easily overlooked by those seeking the allure of orange sunsets and glistening waters. Here, amidst the seemingly ordinary, lies the hidden face of the place that bears the invisible scars of human exodus. Vast, empty and abandoned spaces (Fig. 01) symbolise the vacancy that coexists with the buzz on the island. They underscore the duality of presence and absence, the actual scarcity and perceived abundance, and reflect the substitution of the land's fertility with aridity.

Fig. 01: Abandoned car, Kerkennah (2020), 35mm colour film, digital scan.

Double and triple exposures (Fig. 02) are visual metaphors to convey coexisting yet contrasting realities. The serene island life, steeped in tradition and governed by the quotidian rhythms, contrast with the ‘criminal’ world that emerges mainly after dark.

Fig. 02: Shore , Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film, digital scan.

Any sense of belonging is fleeting, a mirage shimmering in the desert. The land offers no solace, no promise of a future. This chapter serves not as a haven but as a crucible to steel travellers for the journey.

Chapter 2 WATER: FIRST CONTACT WITH THE MEDITERRANEAN

The second chapter explores what it means to be a woman on such a journey. This overflows with a feminine presence. The concept of vessel-like entities is explored through the philosophy of inner and outer spaces. The outward journey is mirrored by the physical vessel, the ship, braving the elements. The inward journey is embodied by the female form, a vessel carrying the weight of the unknown (Fig. 03). Both journeys converge towards a shared destination.

Fig. 03: Woman chained , Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film, digital scan.

I have further manipulated some film. Bleaching, for example, dissolves colour so that the bleached area appears white in the negative and black in the print (Fig. 04). This erasure reinforces the theme of absence, exploring the transit from a place where the migrant was once present to a void through a visual metaphor for disappearance. Infiltrating a new space blends into the act of vanishing from the old one. The profound loss created by these journeys is often overlooked. The physical absence from one’s home, the replacement of familiarity with fear and estrangement, the emotional void left behind for loved ones and the silencing of the harrowing migrant experiences all add another layer of absence. Migration itself becomes a catalyst for absence, the severing of ties to surroundings and social connections is a journey into a liminal space, a state of being neither here nor there. The origin leaves an echo in memory even after physical departure. It is not merely a geographic point but a nexus of experiences, emotions and histories.

Fig. 04: Bleached away, Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film , digital scan (Post processing: bleaching of the negative).

While tension and anxiety permeate this chapter, the island is not as gloomy as the journey would suggest. Those not compelled to escape experience its vibrancy and charm with postcard-worthy sunsets and sunrises (Fig. 05). Not all enjoy that luxury. Postcolonial conditions, exploitation and discriminatory migration policies condemn entire regions to cycles of poverty and deprivation. For many women, the island could never be anything more than a sojourn. Philosophical meditations on absence take on a new dimension when juxtaposed with the harsh reality of the Mediterranean as a colonial sea.^[7] Gaps and voids are geo-politically relevant, defining the experience of those who traverse it.

Fig. 05: Postcard series , Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film , digital scan.

Chapter 3 PILGRIMAGE: THE JOURNEY WITHIN AND AT SEA

Traversing the central Mediterranean can take several days. This section examines the heart of the voyage. Fully in black and white, it reflects the sacred nature of this transformation as a testament of faith and resilience. Each soul will emerge renewed, irrevocably altered and absolved.

Fig. 06: Mother and Son (2022), Black & White 35 mm film, digital scan.

Black-and-white photography detaches itself from reality by stripping away vibrant hues, and it feels surreal because we experience the world in colour. But in this narrative, such detachment is necessary for the metaphor to sink in. We witness not the singular struggle of one migrant, nor a solitary woman's plight. Instead, this chapter is about a cluster of migrant women from several backgrounds aiming at the same end. Therefore, we must transcend individual journeys, aiming instead for a global phenomenon encompassing the full range of roles women play from daughter to mother and everything in between (Fig. 06).

Fig. 07: Parts of a sum (2021), Black & white 35 mm film. Intentional light leaks, digital scan (in-camera processing, light leaking).

The narrative embraces intentional light leaks while photographing, mimicking water effects (Fig. 07). Fragmented portrayals of the female form are deliberate, as their sum may allow reconstruction of the body that once left the shore.

Fig. 08: Sum of parts (2021), Black & white 35 mm film. Intentional light leaks, digital scan (in-camera processing, light leaking).

The experience and the tragedy remain obscure from the outside, but we yet hope that the vessels reach their destination whole ( Fig. 08).

Chapter 4 THE GREAT BEYOND: ARRIVAL OR LACK THEREOF

Fig. 09: Blouse on shore, Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film , digital scan.

The seemingly straightforward concept of arrival gains complexity on this trip. What does this hard-won destination signify for the individual? And for those lost at sea, claimed by the fear that haunted their journey, arrival is a grim fulfilment of prophecy. How do the adventurer and the observer grasp this notion (Fig. 09)? From the European perspective, the Mediterranean remains a frontier, a line dividing ‘us’ from ‘them’.^[8] Eurocentric narratives paint the region with a broad brush, privileging the protection-worthy global North over the struggling South. This fosters not only the erasure of entire cultures through continued colonial marginalisation, but also a stark dichotomy in the perception of the same absence, referring to the migrants’ absence as well as that of the destination’s inhabitants.

Fig. 10: Gaze (2022), 35mm colour film, digital scan.

Even in the celebrated kind of arrival, a disquieting truth lingers. Crossing this fluid border disorients identity, expanding beyond measure the emotional rift caused by the severance of intimate ties with land, people and perhaps life itself (Fig. 10). This project began as a personal odyssey, a quest to grasp the complexities of womanhood, the trauma of displacement and the resilience of the migrant spirit. I sought to illuminate, through the lens of femininity, secret journeys across the Mediterranean Sea (Fig. 11). Ultimately, however, the exploration raised more questions than answers.

Fig. 11: Womanhood (2022), 35mm colour film , digital scan.

Yet a single question persists. And it is essential. And it is relentless: Where did she go? And what should we do about it? ^[1] Quran. 'Surah An-Nisa [The Women] 4:97', in The Qu'ran: Arabic Text with Corresponding English Meaning, ed. and trans. Saheeh International (1997). ^[2] For more on this tragic pattern, see 'Four bodies recovered off Tunisia following migrant boat accident', 2022, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/45687/four-bodies-recovered-off-tunisia-following-migrant-boat-accident; 'Tunisia: Navy recovers seven bodies from Mediterranean Sea', 2023, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/51170/tunisia-navy-recovers-seven-bodies-from-mediterranean-sea; 'Tunisia recovers around 210 bodies of migrants', 2023, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/48625/tunisia-recovers-around-210-bodies-of-migrants. ^[3] Liska Wittenberg, Managing Mixed Migration: The Central Mediterranean Route to Europe (New York: International Peace Institute 2017). ^[4] 'Tunisia's Kerkennah Islands: A land for smuggling', The New Arab, 2018, accessed 2 June 2024, https://www.newarab.com/analysis/tunisias-kerkennah-islands-land-smuggling. ^[5] Riman Abouelhassan, Middle East and North Africa: Migrants Deaths [sic] and Disappearances in 2023, (United Nations Migration, IOM, 2024). ^[6] 'Women refugees and migrants', UN Women, accessed 30 June 2024, https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/women-refugees-and-migrants. ^[7] M. Borutta, & S. Gekas, ‘A Colonial Sea: the Mediterranean’, 1798–1956. European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire (2012). ^[8] Michael A. Kozakowski, 'Making “Mediterranean Migrants”: Geopolitical Transitions, Migratory Policy, and French Conceptions of the Mediterranean in the 20th Century', Cahiers de la Méditerranée 89 (2014) 10.4000/cdlm.7776.

bibliography

Abouelhassan, Riman. Middle East and North Africa: Migrants Deaths [sic] and Disappearances in 2023: United Nations Migration, IOM, 2024. 'Tunisia's Kerkennah Islands: A land for smuggling'. The New Arab, 2018, accessed 2 June 2024, https://www.newarab.com/analysis/tunisias-kerkennah-islands-land-smuggling. 'Four bodies recovered off Tunisia following migrant boat accident'. 2022, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/45687/four-bodies-recovered-off-tunisia-following-migrant-boat-accident. Kozakowski, Michael A. 'Making “Mediterranean Migrants”: Geopolitical Transitions, Migratory Policy, and French Conceptions of the Mediterranean in the 20th Century'. Cahiers de la Méditerranée 89 (2014): 181-93. https://doi.org/10.4000/cdlm.7776. 'Surah An-Nisa [The Women] 4:97'. Edited and Translated by Saheeh International. In The Qu'ran: Arabic Text with Corresponding English Meaning, 1997. 'Tunisia recovers around 210 bodies of migrants'. 2023, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/48625/tunisia-recovers-around-210-bodies-of-migrants. 'Tunisia: Navy recovers seven bodies from Mediterranean Sea'. 2023, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/51170/tunisia-navy-recovers-seven-bodies-from-mediterranean-sea. Wittenberg, Liska. Managing Mixed Migration: The Central Mediterranean Route to Europe. New York: International Peace Institute 2017. 'Women refugees and migrants'. UN Women, accessed 30 June 2024, https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/women-refugees-and-migrants.

citation information

Harmessi, Rim, 'Odyssey of oblivion: a chronicle of displacement from the Kerkennah Islands', Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. global dis:connect, 24 September 2024, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/09/24/odyssey-of-oblivion-a-chronicle-of-displacement-from-the-kerkennah-islands/.

24 September 2024

In Blog, Blog 2024

Picturing the sea of absence

florian bachmeier

In my work as a documentary photographer, particularly in my reports on refugees and their escape and migration routes from the Mediterranean and the war in Ukraine, I have consistently explored the theme of absence. Initially perhaps unconsciously, and later more deliberately, this concept became a central motif. Photography is a powerful tool, capable of evoking profound emotional reactions and shaping narrative discourses. As a medium, photography has an inherently intimate relationship with the concept of absence. Absence in photography refers to the deliberate omission or lack of elements in an image that one might ordinarily expect to find. This approach can serve various conceptual purposes and is intentionally used to achieve a specific effect. By omitting certain elements, photographers can amplify the significance of the objects that are present, guiding the viewer's perception. Absence in photography thus also fulfils a narrative function. In documentary photography, for instance, the absence of people in a place that would usually be bustling with activity can powerfully comment on social, political and emotional states. This absence can evoke feelings of isolation, loss and emptiness, prompting deeper reflection. It serves as a blank space, a hint of what is not visible in the image. It challenges viewers to think about the unseen and the unspoken. The blank space metaphorically represents absence or what is past and transient. Absence in photography creates a potent aesthetic impact. The presence of absence is, in a sense, the full stop, the ‘sudden awakening’ in the sense of Roland Barthes,[1] in many of my photographs.

Fig. 1: The horizon stretches across the sea off Lesbos Island, embodying the profound absence left behind by those who once sought refuge on its shores. Lesbos, Greece, 2017 (Image by the author)

Since my stays and travels to the hotspots of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in the Mediterranean, I have been deeply engaged with these concepts as a photographer. Through my images from places like Idomeni, the transit camp in northern Greece, the Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, warehouses in the Serbian capital Belgrade, refugee shelters in Bulgaria and the Spanish enclave Ceuta on the African continent, I strive to document and analyse absences. Absence here is not only the physical lack of something but also the emotional, social and cultural void created by flight, displacement and migration.

Fig. 2: Amid the barbed wire and bleak surroundings of Idomeni camp, the absence of certainty and stability hangs heavily over the refugees waiting at the closed border. Idomeni, Greece, 2016 (Image by the author)

The meaning of absence

Absence, at its core, is a state or feeling of lack. When one considers the inhumane conditions in the camps, this lack or absence, the shattered hopes and the associated pain become particularly visible. The absence or loss of home, security, family, belonging and identity. In the worst cases, it is the absence of any hope. These absences are tangible and experiential both physically and psychologically. Photography can capture and depict these absences profoundly. I think of the emptiness and hopelessness in the eyes of many individuals portrayed and the bleak, chaotic landscapes of camps like Idomeni or Moria, which seem to gnaw like festering wounds at their surroundings. Pieces of torn clothing on barbed wire fences and other obstacles, faded photographs of those left behind or deceased, abandoned belongings left by those who had no choice but to leave their previous lives behind. Possessions lost on the run or hoarded in a drenched tent. Traces of escape through hostile territory. Motifs that represent and symbolically condense absence, repeating themselves in varied yet similar forms, becoming a constant that runs through the situation of refugees and their flight.

Fig. 3: Empty blankets and drenched sleeping bags, painting a poignant picture of absence in the heart of the refugee camp. Idomeni, Greece, 2016 (Image by the author)

Susan Sontag argued that images, photographs, have the power to haunt us and elicit emotional reactions, something pure narrative storytelling often fails to achieve.[2] She describes the haunting quality of photographs that penetrate deeply into our consciousness, compelling us to reflect on what we see. I hope that my images from these camps and of the people I have been able to accompany on their journeys will ultimately serve not just as mere records but as windows into the reality of these people who otherwise remain largely invisible. They hopefully challenge viewers to confront the harsh reality of refugees and their flight, grasping the intolerable absences that shape their lives. Perhaps photography can thus serve as an alternative, complementary method to highlight, investigate and reflect on such dissociations and absences. Traditional sociological investigations rely on empirical and quantitative methods to collect and analyse data. But do these methods capture the deeper emotional and psychological dimensions of these existential human experiences? Here, photography as a medium can be a valuable complement. It can make the invisible visible, showing gaps and voids created by absences and document them. Camps like Idomeni or Moria are places where absence is omnipresent. The people who have to live in these camps have fled their home countries to escape war, persecution and poverty. They have left everything behind — houses, apartments, possessions. Often, they have lost loved ones. They have often experienced the unspeakable, carrying deep traumas with them. Arriving in one of these camps, they find themselves in a sort of limbo, a space between the past they have left behind and a future that remains uncertain. Many images from these contexts, including my own, depict people living in cramped spaces under often unbearable conditions, in cold, in extreme heat, without access to vital and basic services, without access to clean water, food and basic medical care.

Fig. 4: In the dim confines of a Belgrade warehouse, traumatised refugee Mohammed washes in freezing temperatures, the stark absence of safety and home evident in his solitary ritual. Belgrade, Serbia, 2017 (Image by the author)

Absences in refugee camps and other locations along migration routes refer pragmatically but primarily to the lack of resources necessary for a commodious life. There is often no medical care, injuries often remain untreated or are inadequately treated, chronic illnesses go untreated, and the lack of psychological support exacerbates the trauma many refugees have experienced and suffered. On migration routes and in camps, there is also a constant, often life-threatening lack of security. Extreme cold, constant rain and the outbreak of a fire like in Moria often have catastrophic consequences. Violence, abuse and exploitation are widespread. Security forces, where present, are often unable to adequately protect the residents. Women and children are particularly at risk and often suffer from sexual harassment and abuse. The sanitary conditions in the camps and informal settlements along migration routes are often catastrophic. There is no sanitation. As previously mentioned, there is a lack of professional psychosocial support and networks to provide mutual support. Conflicts between people of different nationalities often occur. All this exacerbates the burdens refugees already face. Many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders. These absences have serious impacts on individuals and communities. They undermine human dignity and worsen the already precarious living conditions of refugees and those in flight. In some of my photographs, I depict the architecture of makeshift, hastily erected shelters that often provide no protection. I show people who have to live in hiding, who must remain invisible. I show their sparse meals, their torn clothes, their injuries, the effects of violence and the hardships they endured during their escape. There are images of blankets, drenched sleeping bags, camps in inhospitable areas, pictures of worn-out children's shoes—a sad reminder of a childhood denied to the wearers of these shoes, likely to remain thus. Images that tell of a lives in a constant state of emergency in the sense of Giorgio Agamben,[3] particularly relevant in this context and these places: a situation where seemingly normal laws and rights are suspended in response to a crisis, creating a space where human rights are systematically suspended. Especially the camps exist in a state of lawlessness, operating as legal grey zones, and this state of emergency has long become the norm. Ideally, images evoke emotional reactions — this, at least, is my hope and drive as a photographer — and make the absence of normality, of safety palpable. They hopefully speak a clear language and show the deep scars caused by this life on the run. Can photographs, as visual stimuli, evoke affective responses? Can they compel viewers to engage with the situations they depict, to connect with the people in these images? Images are a bridge between viewers and refugees, who are otherwise only perceived as abstract numbers in statistics. [1] Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Reflections of Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981). [2] Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973). [3] Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

bibliography

Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Reflections of Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.

citation information

Bachmeier, Florian, 'Picturing the sea of absence', Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, 10 September 2024, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/09/10/picturing-the-sea-of-absence/.

10 September 2024

In Blog 2023

Nomadic Camera: revisiting a workshop on photography and displacement at gd:c

sophie eisenried

Figure 1: Erich Stenger, Die Geschichte der Kleinbildkamera bis zur Leica, (Wetzlar: Umschau Verlag, 1949), 16.[1]

From 13 June to 15 June 2023, a hybrid international workshop bearing the title Nomadic Camera. Photography, Displacement and Dis:connectivities took place at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect in cooperation with the Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies (ZeM) Potsdam. Nomadic Camera was dedicated to processes of migration, exile and flight and their visualisation, perception and dissemination through photography. The workshop explored the technical, medial and aesthetic relationship between photography and contemporary migration, historical exile and flight as a central discursive setting in which specific forms of mobility are negotiated from the mid-19th century to the present. The interdisciplinary workshop was organised by Burcu Dogramaci (Munich), Jens Jäger (Cologne), Winfried Gerling (Potsdam) and Birgit Mersmann (Bonn). The workshop kicked off with the gd:c annual lecture given by T. J. Demos (Santa Cruz) on the topic of Weaponized Environments. From the Migrant Image to the Media of Causes.

Annual lecture, 13 June 2023

In his lecture, T. J. Demos talked about the dynamics and aesthetics of migratory images and probed the representational regimes of refugees. He described the mobility of images of migration and problematised the migrant as a representational subject. He noted that images of migration became mobile screens onto which all kinds of content can be projected by liberal and right-wing media alike. Demos concluded that such projection is driving the rise of epistemic inaccuracies in images and their lack of documentary potential, which themselves are due to visually simplifying image regimes and resulting political interests. He described this development as a photography of faces, whereby subjects are reduced to their physiognomy. As a result, migrants have been dramaturgically and racially limited to their stories (of flight), and no critical reporting takes place. Demos then proposed a shift from a photography of faces to a photography of causes, asking what aesthetics and image regimes were necessary to legitimise this shift. For him, the answer lies in linking the concept of figure with that of ground, not considering environments as neutral contexts but rather asking how images and subjects are connected. He proposed forensic research as well as politically comprehensive analyses to paint a clear picture of political and economic antagonisms and to show networks of power by challenging racialised images in media.

Figure 2: Annette Vowinckel introducing Noemi Quagliati (photo by the author).

14 June 2023

Nomadic Camera began with processes of migration and flight after 2015 and their representation, perception and dissemination through photography. The participants examined the relationship between photography and contemporary migration in technology, media and aesthetics as well as historical exile and flight as central discursive settings. Reflections on creating places and belonging, ruptures between life and work in the past and present, experiences of loss and challenges of beginning were prominent topics. As a concept, nomadic camera focuses on:

how dislocations relate to the technical development of photography as a mobile medium;
how camera technologies presuppose and influence the visual formulation of experiences of exile, migration and flight;
what changes in the aesthetics and style, methods and practices of photography imply for temporary mobility, geographical displacement and resettlement.

The first panel was dedicated to the topic of techniques and technologies. Beyond discussing the camera as an artificial object, the participants also considered how perspectives of shooting and their results have changed concepts of photography. Svea Bräunert (Potsdam) connected techniques and technologies of nomadic cameras to the fact that the 21st century is hardly imaginable without accounting for the digital. For her, ‘the digital’ refers to migrants’ (as she referred to them) use of smartphones to plan their escape routes and stay in touch with their social networks as well as to the virtual fortification of borders through surveillance, biometrics and other technologies. She described migrant aesthetics as a ‘moving stream’, in which movement is central in determining the connection between the digital and migration. She concluded that films can no longer be clearly distinguished from photographs. While films have slowed, now containing abstract-looking still images, photography has become a stream always consisting of multiple images. As well as exemplifying what Nathan Jurgenson described as ‘social photos’,[2] the latter also defines smartphone photography, where one image is synthesised from many shots and motion is routinely added. Florian Krautkrämer (Lucerne) took a different tack, asking what dangers and responsibilities participatory techniques of filmmaking entail in the context of flight and migration. He pointed out that the participatory often makes use of the pain, fear and worries of others. The question of who films what for whom arose. Referring to, Wu Wenuang's China Village Self-Governance Film Project, which captures the public and political life of Chinese villages through the lens of their inhabitants, Krautkrämer emphasised that it is important to distinguish between the handed-over and the given camera. The handed-over camera reduces people with specific goals to human tripods. With the given camera, on the other hand, not everything is predetermined; the nature of the camera is important to the outcome. Although no political conflicts can be solved by the given camera, the filmed person can receive a hearing and attention. Thus, Florian Krautkrämer claims that the given camera is more politically open. The second panel was dedicated to bodies, agents and performativity. The discussion focused on the importance of the context of images/photographs and drew attention to the performative character of photography and a theorisation of the term agency. Burcu Dogramaci asked how the concept of the performative relates to migrant photography. Lara Bourdin (Montreal) addressed that question by talking about Notícias de América, a performance by Paulo Nazareth. The Afro-indigenous Brazilian artist pictured himself alone and together with anonymous people holding a cardboard sign. One of the signs, for example, bore the inscription: ‘I am not migrating to the USA’. The surrounding elements, however, suggested otherwise. With his simple clothes and dirty feet, Nazareth recalled the stereotypical figure of the *Latin American migrant* that circulates in Western documentary photography.[3] By developing an imaginary migration story, a re-enactment of real migration stories of people and bodies took place, whereby the performance is a direct, political intervention that exposes forms and racialising processes of photojournalism. Evelyn Runge (Cologne) took a step back from the performative and asked about agency. She examined the ethics and agency of digital images and photojournalistic experiences with the help of the actor-network-theory.[4] She found that ethics and agency are strongly intertwined and asked whether the nomadic digital represents the new ‘normal’. She attested to the participatory nature of the digital image through mechanisms such as reposting on social media and describes this process as nomadic. Afterwards, T. J. Demos asked whether the term nomadic is not inflationary and whether the nomadic is falsely equated with precarity and migration more generally.

Figure 3: The workshop participants enjoyed an evening viewing at the Arena Cinema in Munich (photo by the author)

15 June 2023

At the beginning of the third panel, devoted to media narrations and narratives, Birgit Mersmann pointed out that photo stories contribute to the narrative of migration and that, with the advent of new media and the resulting storytelling possibilities, narratives of migration have undergone a techno-social change. She probed the connections between media historiography, the nomadic camera and new narratives photography is producing. She noted that means of displacing and interrupting narratives can be analysed and distinguished in photographs. Anna Messner (Düsseldorf) added that there is a contradiction between what is seen/displayed and the actual event, referring to how objects can oscillate between visibility and invisibility — appearing, disappearing then reappearing — depending on the context in which media like photo albums are viewed. Subsequently, Ainslie Murray (Sydney) discussed narrative interruptions in her own art project called Registry of Itinerant Architectures — a dynamic online registry of wild, mobile, temporary and inventive forms of architecture associated with contemporary nomadic life. She talked about how her project began, about her walk through the wilderness in central Australia on the Larapinta trail from May to October 2022 during the Covid-19 pandemic. She referred to her preparations, initially hiking in a group and then deciding to continue her journey alone. The fears and worries that repeatedly interrupted her journey were captured through artistic/photographic methods in her art project. But besides creating images of interruptions, the images show improvised scenes of place-making and offer insights into the intense physical and psychological dimensions of mobility, characterised by risk, repetition, interruptions and failure where the landscape played an important role, as in the search for shade. The fourth panel dealt with circulation, archive and memory. Jens Jäger asked what and how we think about the term circulation and what forms of knowledge production play a role. He suggested the archive as a place where knowledge is stored and ascribes it to a tradition of reliving biography. Memory is the constant movement of experience. The archive also shapes ideas about and memories of migration and is therefore significant to nomadic cameras. Helene Roth (Munich) reflected on the archive by discussing her analyses in the ERC project Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile (METROMOD). In recent years, the team has developed an interactive digital archive of emigrant artists in the six METROMOD cities of Bombay, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, London, New York and Shanghai. The archive not only contains archive entries, but also locates home and work addresses on city maps. The archive also provides important research-based insights. Roth investigated photographers who emigrated to New York in the 1930s and 40s, asking who inscribed themselves in the city's history and how. How are the emigrant photographers (in)visible on the city map? In what contact zones, networks and specific neighbourhoods did they work and live in New York? How were transcultural networks between the METROMOD cities created by migration movements? Roth described the challenges of handling of fragmentary information, which in turn is connected to media like photography. However, the digital archive lends itself to visualising fragmentary and nomadic knowledge through, for example, maps. Afterwards, Zeynep Gürsel (New Brunswick) mentioned that every archive contains certain temporalities. She looked at the effects of the ghostly presence of photographs in an archive of the Ottoman Empire, from which those photographed and captured had left the country without a chance to return. Zeynep Gürsel traces the circulation of 393 individuals and photographs to examine mobility, nationality, archives and the construction of individual and collective memories. She found that each image contains two temporalities: that of the Armenian past and the future of the homeland to-be. Elizabeth Edwards (Leicester) contextualised thoughts on memories with a historiographical intervention on the archive. She used Zygmunt Bauman’s term liquid times, which refers to the uncertainties in contemporary society, in which mass migration and the fluid definition of ‘home’ are essential features.[5] She asked how photographs produce strong histories, as she named them, and suggested that this is only possible because of their fluidity, in that their power structures and political and social agency change depending on what one inscribes on the image. However, images are used/understood as witnesses as well as legitimators of existences around which we, as humans, construct our realities, make new connections and thus create a tapestry of history and reality. The final discussion, beyond those sadly not mentioned here, was devoted to defining the term nomadic camera and, more broadly, what the nomadic might be. It quickly became clear that there is no one exclusive definition of nomadism, let alone the nomadic camera. It is much more important, as numerous discussions and lectures have confirmed, to refer to the political in the nomadic, recalling Demos’s lecture about the danger of romanticising the nomadic as boundless travel and thereby overlooking the fact that the less privileged are excluded from this freedom.[6] Hence, it is necessary to recognise and analyse technologies, agents, narratives and archives of nomadic cameras, without forgetting that nomadic does not inevitably mean freedom and that freedom remains a fantasy for many. [1] Erich Stenger, Die Geschichte der Kleinbildkamera bis zur Leica (Frankfurt am Main: Wetzlar, Leitz, 1949). [2] Nathan Jurgenson, The Social Photo: On Photography and Social (London/New York: Verso, 2019). [3] I refrain from further explaining or exemplifying the stereotype of the *Latin American Migrant* in order to avoid reproducing racist representations. [4] Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). [5] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). [6] T.J. Demos, The Migrant Image The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013).

bibliography

Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Demos, T.J. The Migrant Image The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. Jurgenson, Nathan. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social. London/ New York: Verso, 2019. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Stenger, Erich. Die Geschichte der Kleinbildkamera bis zur Leica. Frankfurt am Main: Wetzlar, Leitz, 1949.

citation information:

Eisenried, Sophie, 'Nomadic Camera: revisiting a workshop on photography and displacement at gd:c', global dis:connect, 19 September 2023, 2023, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/09/19/nomadic-camera-revisiting-a-workshop-on-photography-and-displacement-at-gdc/.

19 September 2023

In Past events 2023

13-15 June, Nomadic Camera. Photography, Displacement and Dis:connectivities

Processes of migration and flight after 2015 and their depiction, perception and distribution through photography are the starting point of ‘Nomadic Camera’. We seek to investigate the relationship of photography and contemporary migration in technology, the media and aesthetics in addition to historical exile and flight as the pivotal discursive setting in which specific forms of mobility extending from the mid-19th century to today have been negotiated. The concept adapts the term ‘nomadic’ — a transitory form of existence — beyond static concepts of being and national boundaries (Demos 2017). ‘Nomadism’ refers to a form of mobility that converges with and diverges from other terms, such as ‘travel’, ‘displacement’ and ‘exile’ (Kaplan 1996). At the same time, displacements are intrinsically related to connective and disconnective experiences, including place-making and belonging, ruptures between life and work in the past and present, experiences of loss and challenges of beginnings. ‘Nomadic Camera’ will centre around the following questions: how do dislocations interconnect with the technical evolution of photography as a mobile medium? How do camera technologies presuppose and affect the visual formulation of exile, migration and flight experiences? What modifications in aesthetics and style, methods and practices of photography do temporary mobility, geographical relocation and resettlement imply?

Organisers: Burcu Dogramaci (Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, LMU Munich), Winfried Gerling (European Media Studies – University of Applied Sciences Potsdam/University Potsdam and Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies (ZeM), Potsdam), Jens Jäger (University of Cologne) and Birgit Mersmann (University of Bonn)

Venues

13 June 2023 gd:c annual lecture / Keynote ‘Nomadic Camera’: Historisches Kolleg Kaulbachstraße 15 80539 Munich

14/15 June 2023 Workshop ‘Nomadic Camera’: Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect Maria-Theresia-Str. 21 81675 Munich

14 June 2023 Film screening Fati’s Choice: Arena Filmtheater Hans-Sachs-Str. 7 80469 Munich Please register by 4 June HERE.

Click HERE to download the programme. Continue Reading

17 May 2023

In Past events 2023

13 June, gd:c annual lecture

T. J. Demos (Santa Cruz), Globalisation, dis/connection and migration: critical visual cultures and climates of capital

Venue

Historisches Kolleg Kaulbachstraße 15 80539 Munich

Please register by 4 June HERE. Please click HERE to download the flyer.

15 May 2023

In Blog 2022

Mapping the wounds of the world: dis:connectivities of global representation at the 12th Berlin Biennale

ayşe güngör

The title of this year's Berlin Biennale, Still Present!, reflected its objective to examine the consequences of the collective trauma caused by colonialism, structural violence and, more generally, the crimes of modern capitalism through a current perspective. Kader Attia, curator of the Biennale, and the curatorial team^[1] expand on their approach, namely, to make the crimes of colonialism apparent through the agency of art. Repairing this trauma and the ‘wounds accumulated throughout the history of Western modernity’[2] – as Attia refers to it – the reparation process appears as both a question and a tool throughout the works presented in the Biennale. In this context, the Biennale's global artistic scope will be my focus, which connects as well as disconnects through a range of artistic approaches in its curatorial agenda. Throughout the course of the Biennale, the artistic and curatorial decisions were broadened with numerous decolonial perspectives from various regions, pluralising the global representation. Parallel to the ideas of Bilbao, ‘most discourses and narratives that account for the Biennale’s globality rely almost entirely on visibility’,[3] which is reflected in the curatorial agenda of the recent Berlin Biennale in terms of an approach to globalisation that accentuates unseen local issues in various regions. The issue at hand, as Ndikung points out, is:

Where is the local, especially in this postcolonial era and context, in the crafting of the concept of global museum? And this local cannot be simplified but analyzed in its complexity that goes beyond national or racial categories and that takes into consideration historical and geographical entanglements as much as geopolitical and social intricacies.[4]

Entanglements are occasionally emphasised in the framework of the Biennale, which emphasises broadening the perspectives it represents. This framework, which seeks to account for the ‘global’ by combining cases from diverse peripheries, also risks reducing a multifaceted globality to the dichotomies of ‘the West and the rest’ or ‘colonisers vs. colonised’. Recalling the part that situatedness plays in the logic of liberal capitalism, the general intention of global art discourse is to dissolve these dichotomies. As Jacob Birken addresses, the discourse ‘might not solve anything — just make [these dichotomies] easier to swallow’.[5] When examining the Biennale as a larger phenomenon, a pluralising strategy emerges as the prevailing tool to maintain its position in the global art world. Therefore, the Biennale is often taken as a microcosm of the globalisation of the arts. The curatorial approach of the recent Biennale reflects the general tendency to portray the globe, with its objective of interconnecting the stories of many cultural spheres. In this regard, the 2022 Berlin Biennale fits the general narrative of Biennale-making in a transcultural context, since it seeks to present a comprehensive picture of the globe by focusing on the shared meanings of those affected by oppression and violence. The globally interconnected histories reflected in the artworks navigate distinctive modalities of artistic production. Specifically, archival practices and the ‘field of emotions’ that Attia illustrates are a frequent tool artists implement to confront the legacies of colonial racism. Here, a ‘field of emotions’ helps to reclaim our present, which no longer belongs to us since it has been ‘colonized 24/7 by computational governance and capitalism’.[6] Attia proposes that the agency of art provides us with the freedom to be in the present. In a similar vein, the framing of art in this context evokes an artistic manifesto. When it comes to seeing the globe through a range of artistic practices, thinking broadly about these methodologies raises the question of what connects us and disconnects us. To this end, I would like to gain a clearer sense of what Attia means when he refers to ‘the field of emotions’. One could refer to Dewey’s concept of ‘aesthetic emotion’ through the agency of art experience. This principle describes how, as the artist works with their raw materials, they transform the raw feelings into artistic emotions. Based on the premise that there is no fundamental difference between everyday life and art, but simply a difference in the degree of differentiation and integration, aesthetic emotion is therefore well-structured.[7] Since aesthetic experience is made possible by reshaping materials on purpose until a sensitivity to the characteristics of objects can be realised, this process makes it an aesthetic experience rather than simply an experience. Aesthetic experience gives us a chance to engage with our emotions in this artistic playground. These works not only generate a field of emotions, but also produce for the audience a space in which they are able to pause, think and reflect. This space provides the means to identify with the subject at hand and, as a result, engage with it as it's being recognised. For instance, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi’s work incorporates elements such as a bluescreen, a hospital bed, a boat, an oxygen mask, a portrait, and a fire-resistant plant into an installation that tells multi-layered stories independent of a specific time or place. Using a blend of real and fictitious elements, the film follows a woman as she travels from Vietnam to Thailand and then to Germany in the aftermath of the American war in Vietnam. The elements of the installation metaphorically set the ground for an imaginary journey and enables the audience to identify with the subject and the story in a womb-like setting, symbolised here by the boat and the operating table. Similarly, using natural and synthetic materials like metal, sugar, charcoal and latex, Christine Safatly's paintings and sculptures depart from the artist's personal history and local setting to probe social constructions of gender and other forms of alienation. Using allegorical narration and juxtaposition, her works encourage the viewer to relate to subjects of physiological suffering and everyday experiences with authoritarian regimes in Lebanon and beyond. This allegorical storytelling is not limited to this, in many cases, the emotional field presented invites viewers to think and reflect.

Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, THIS UNDREAMT OF SAIL IS WATERED BY THE WHITE WIND OF THE ABYSS, 2022, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable, research image, Photo by the author

Christine Safatly, PIECE 1, 2019, from the series THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KETCHUP AND RIPE TOMATOES, 2019-20, fabric pierced with nails and pins, Photo by the author

Archival research and documentary modes of representation also recur throughout the Biennale. Most of archival art's potential is due to its frequent reproductions of alternative historical perspectives, primarily depicting the unrepresented in official histories to challenge power relations and authority. However, archival practices have also attracted criticism for their representation politics and institutional critique. For instance, Hal Foster criticised the lack of critical engagement, ‘representational wholeness,’ and ‘institutional integrity’ in archival art. In his article Archival Impulse, he adds:

The work in question is archival since it not only draws on informal archives but produces them as well and does so in a way that underscores the nature of all archival materials as found yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet private. Further, it often arranges these materials according to a quasi-archival logic, a matrix of citation and juxtaposition, and presents them in a quasi-archival architecture, a complex of texts and objects.[8]

Artistic approaches to archives cannot be limited to these critical approaches since they also enable alternative forms of representation by challenging the normative historical narratives or reinterpreting them. Archival artistic practices reflect unstructured information that is neither inherently linear nor connected, and they admit a wide variety of formats. Many instances of archival art appear in the Biennale, including the work of Azoulay, who assembled texts and images shot in Berlin right after World War II with some quotations of women who lived in Berlin in 1945. By interspersing these historical documents with her comments, modifications, and substitutions, so she uncovers the existence of these women who were excluded from official historical archives. Similarly, research agency Forensic Architecture's Cloud Studies (2022) investigates how the air we breathe can be weaponised through herbicidal warfare, tear gas, forest fires, oil and gas pollution and bomb attacks from Palestine to Beirut, London to Indonesia, and around the United States–Mexico border.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RAPE (detail), 2017/2022, vintage photographs, prints, untaken b/w photographs, books, essay, magazines, drawings, dimensions variable, Photo by the author

Forensic Architecture, CLOUD STUDIES, 2022, 2-channel video installation, colour, sound, 26′08′′, Photo by the author

While these documentary and investigative practices intertwine in many instances, mergers of art and documentation sometimes collapse the separation between the emotional field and documentary practices. Such works often combine political and poetic voices, such as in Exile Is a Hard Job (1983/2022) by Nil Yalter, which involves experimenting with photographs, transcriptions, quotes, and videos to explore lives immigrant women and families from Portugal and Turkey. These practices of documenting, drawing, and collecting involve an open-ended process of tracing and moving with the experience itself, implicating several challenging modalities of artistic production that exist between art and anthropology. Archival modes of representation employ particular narratives to reflect upon historical realities. They, on the other hand, do not leave enough room for interpretation or engagement with the subject and instead present the audience with the narratives that have already been transcribed. After getting involved in a great deal of documentation procedures throughout the Biennale, one may, in the end, realise that they are drowning in an excessive amount of information that might be hard to engage. I believe that the more room they give for the audience to interpret the subject, the more possibilities for connection they generate. This most likely corresponds to the ‘emotional field’ that the curatorial team intended to yield with this selection of works in this context. What can the Biennale accomplish with these practices? What connects and disconnects us globally and interpersonally is rooted in the space provided for viewers to think rather than inundating them with information. Since any dichotomous division does not represent the complexity of the world, such global representation fails to question the narratives that have shaped the world. Given the diversity of the art world, it is difficult to identify a single world centre or global narrative that might include all the forms of transformation.[9] To achieve a decolonised representation of art, one must refrain from making geographical generalisations when selecting which parts of history are — or are not — included in narratives. Instead of constraining viewers to a certain time and location or overloading them with information while engaging in documentary practices, the space opened by the poetic core of the aesthetic experience transcends both. That space enables the viewer to connect with their thoughts and feelings while experiencing this artistic playground. Mapping colonial wounds would not be reduced to geography but may be opened to the exchanges, circulations, entanglements, conflicts, and disconnections of the global context. ^[1] Kader Attia, curator of the 2022 Berlin Biennale, has assembled a five-member team to assist him, including Ana Teixeira Pinto, Đỗ Tường Linh, Marie Helene Pereira, Noam Segal and Rasha Salti. [2] Kader Attia, ‘Introduction’, in 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (11.6. -18.9.2022), Catalogue (Germany, n.d.), 22. [3] Ana Bilbao, ‘From the Global to the Local (and Back)’, Third Text 33, no. 2 (4 March 2019): 179–94. [4] Soh Bejeng Ndikung Bonaventure, In a While Or Two We Will Find the Tone: Essays and Proposals, Curatorial Concepts, and Critiques (Berlin: Archive Books, 2020), 186. [5] Jakob Birken, ‘Spectres of 1989: On Some Misconceptions of the “Globality” in and of Contemporary Art’, in Situating Global Art, ed. Sara Dornhof et al. (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2018), 49. [6] Attia, ‘Introduction’, 34. [7] H. Hohr, ‘Aesthetic Emotion: An Ambiguous Concept in John Dewey’s Aesthetics’, Ethics and Education 5, no. 3 (1 November 2010): 247–61. [8] Hal Foster, ‘An Archival Impulse’, October 110 (2004): 3–22. [9] Christian Morgner, ‘Diversity and (In)Equality in the Global Art World: Global Development and Structure of Field-Configuring Events’, New Global Studies 11, no. 3 (2017): 165–96.

Bibliography

Attia, Kader. ‘Introduction’. In 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (11.6. -18.9.2022), Catalogue. Germany, n.d. Bilbao, Ana. ‘From the Global to the Local (and Back)’. Third Text 33, no. 2 (4 March 2019): 179–94. Birken, Jakob. ‘Spectres of 1989: On Some Misconceptions of the “Globality” in and of Contemporary Art’. In Situating Global Art, edited by Sara Dornhof, Nanne Buurman, Birgit Hopfener, and Barbara Lutz, 35–52. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2018. Bonaventure, Soh Bejeng Ndikung. In a While Or Two We Will Find the Tone: Essays and Proposals, Curatorial Concepts, and Critiques. Berlin: Archive Books, 2020. Foster, Hal. ‘An Archival Impulse’. October 110 (2004): 3–22. Hohr, H. ‘Aesthetic Emotion: An Ambiguous Concept in John Dewey’s Aesthetics’. Ethics and Education 5, no. 3 (1 November 2010): 247–61. Morgner, Christian. ‘Diversity and (In)Equality in the Global Art World: Global Development and Structure of Field-Configuring Events’. New Global Studies 11, no. 3 (2017): 165–96.

citation information:

Güngör, Ayşe. ‘Mapping the Wounds of the World: Dis:Connectivities of Global Representation at the 12th Berlin Biennale’, 15 November 2022. https://www.globaldisconnect.org/11/15/mapping-the-wounds-of-the-world-disconnectivities-of-global-representation-at-the-12th-berlin-biennale/?lang=en.

15 November 2022

In Blog 2022

Nomadic camera: photography, exile and dis:connectivity

burcu dogramaci

In 1939, 16-year-old Hans Günter Flieg took a final photo in his hometown of Chemnitz, before he and his family emigrated to Brazil due to anti-Semitic persecution. Upon his arrival in São Paulo, he took the first photo of his exile home. Both pictures appear next to each other on a film strip. Here I focus on these photographs and bring together two concepts that are new to photography and exile research: the nomadic camera and dis:connectivity.

Image: Hans Günter Flieg, Last photograph taken in Chemnitz and first photograph in São Paulo, 1939, credit: Hans Gunter Flieg / Instituto Moreira Salles Collection.

Flieg photographed with an Agfa roll film (Isopan F) suitable for 35mm cameras. He worked with Leica equipment that his parents had purchased in anticipation of his planned emigration to Brazil.[1] Flieg had been taking a photography course with Grete Kaplus at the Berlin Jewish Museum since March 1939. This enabled his family to justify the purchase of cameras for professional reasons and to prepare their son for a career as a photographer and a livelihood abroad.[2] The film strip shows two black-and-white shots: on the left is a view from the window of a street with buildings in the Gründerzeit style. Multi-storey apartment buildings stand on a residential street densely planted with a row of trees. The view of the camera — aimed from one of the upper floors of a building — leads past a residential building; on the left is a broad part with a cloudy sky. Flieg was taking pictures from his parents’ flat, which was located in the Kaßberg district of Chemnitz. Since the turn of the twentieth century, with the industrial boom in the city, the area was considered an upscale and exquisitely built residential district.[3] Flieg’s photo was taken in August 1939. The next photo on the right is dated December 1939 and shows a bright vase of white orchids. Here, too, one of the subjects, the vase, is cropped on the right, standing on a table. Four months separate the two adjacent shots. This film strip is often shown when Flieg’s photographic work is published.[4] Flieg also spoke about this picture in an interview uploaded to the page of the digital exile museum Künste im Exil (Arts in Exile) of the Deutsches Exilarchiv (German Exile Archive) 1933—1945, which itself is a project of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library).[5] The fascination with this negative strip is due to the two photos and the narrow strip between them, which condense an emigration (hi)story. The narrow strip and the four months of time suspended in it both conceal and expose a difficult route that led from Chemnitz to Munich, over the Brenner Pass to Italy and from there by sea to São Paulo. Several thousand kilometres condense just as much on the narrow strip between two photographs as time accumulates on an in-between space. Based on this (arguably enlarged) contact print of the film strip, I offer reflections in two directions. One is about the concept of the nomadic camera. The other is about the adaptation of the term dis:connectivity to photography and exile. With nomadic camera, I refer to the camera and photography as the central medium to visualise cross-border changes of place. Included in the term nomadic are forms of forced or voluntary relocation, i.e. migration, flight, displacement, exile. Etymologically, nomadic derives from the Latin nomas/Greek nomás. Nomás alludes to non-sedentary forms of existence that historically developed in the Old World dry belt — from West Africa, across the Arabian Peninsula to East Asia — of those who spend their lives wandering, adapting to living conditions with scarce resources spread over a wide area.[6] This archaic nomadism of migratory ethnic groups, which persists, has its revenant and related figures in post-industrial societies — in commuters, labour migrants, political refugees, in employees of globally oriented companies, students, global travellers, in artists who are globally present as visiting scholars and exhibitors.[7] With these diverse connotations of nomadism in mind, I would like to refer to Caren Kaplan, who recognises ‘continuities and discontinuities between terms such as “travel”, “displacement” and “location” as well as between the particularized practices and identities of “exile”, “tourist” and “nomad”. All displacements are not the same’.[8] But precisely the often-one-dimensional reception and connotations of these different transitive forms of existence — migration as alienation, travel as experience, nomadism and vagabonding as (artistic) freedom — problematise perceptions of them as sharply delineated possibilities of existence. The point is to focus instead on the intersections that emerge from them and how they catalyse new thoughts and perceptions. Nomads, migrants and travellers are united by change and movement, the potentially temporary instability of their existence, their experience of new spaces, societies and languages. Sometimes, as the history of emigration in the 1930s and 1940s shows, the transitions between tourism and exile were fluid. Examples include transalpine border crossings disguised as ski tours and exhibition and reading tour by artists and writers becoming exile because political circumstances no longer permitted their return.[9] As a concept, the nomadic camera connotes a non-settled and nomadic ‘meta-figure’ or ‘general metaphor’[10] and denotes a transitory state that proceeds from the technical apparatus, the camera, to include the act of photographing, the camera operator(s), the resulting photographs and their circulation as well as the objects photographed. With the accent on the camera, the research interest centres on the complex interconnections of photography, mobility and technology. It extends to touch on the photographic form and aesthetics. Photography can find different languages for forced and voluntary displacements, so the question of a specific pictorial aesthetic, the formal and compositional parameters of the photography of exile, migration and flight, arises. Already in the early days of photography since its introduction in 1839, photographers travelled even with heavy-plate and large-format cameras. Throughout its existence, photography has served as a means of visualising displacements. In 1852, the French writer Victor Hugo went into exile on the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, where he composed autobiographical texts as well as drawings and photographs that pictorially recorded his escape. Hugo’s portraits in the island’s natural environment, taken in cooperation with his son Charles and the journalist Auguste Vaquerie, are perhaps the earliest exile photographs.[11] From Hugo’s exile, widely branching lines extend to current migration, flight and displacement. The 150 years of photographic migration history — or migrant photographic history — is closely connected with technical innovations that can only be traced coarsely here. Camera techniques like the plate camera and the daguerrotype or calotype favoured mainly professional photographers, as these techniques and transporting the large cameras were expensive and time-consuming. The introduction of the Kodak box camera in the late nineteenth century fuelled the market for amateur photography, which burgeoned globally with the miniature 35-mm cameras of the 1920s.[12] Hans Günter Flieg's film strips, the Agfa Isopan F film and the Leica miniature camera indicate photography’s unprecedented mobility in the 1920s and 1930s. Photography with film rolls was a democratic medium of images whose affordability and user-friendly technology made it broadly accessible. In addition, shops sprang up all over the world as service facilities where film had to be deposited for processing, with the negatives and prints to be collected later. Outsourcing the development process promoted the global use of photography by amateurs. Not only was the technology portable, but the photographic prints — the result of the technical process — were also available on the road. Since the massive introduction of miniature cameras in the 1920s at the latest, photography became the technical and artistic medium of migration, exile and flight. Handheld cameras accompanied their owners along their migrations, leaving their homeland either voluntarily and, after 1933, often forcibly. Photographs taken on passages into exile tell of the outward routes and modes of transport.[13] Thus, images created in emigration or reflecting migration phenomena themselves have inherently nomadic qualities. For me, photography is part of a history of migration and mobility. Flieg’s negative strip highlights this in an unusual way, as the movement of the photographer, his camera and the film manifests itself through the photographs in Chemnitz on the left, the narrow strip in the middle and the shot in São Paulo on the right. The localisation in a specific environment as the starting point of the flight is clearly recognisable on the left in the Chemnitz cityscape. São Paulo as the terminus of the escape, meanwhile, is marked by the vase with the white orchids — in Brazil there are about 3,000 species from the Orchidaceae family.[14] The passage itself, as already explained, remains hidden in the dark strip. The negative strip also offers access to, or an adaptation of, the concept of dis:connectivity in the context of global flight movements and their mediatisation in photography. Dis:connectivity overcomes a binary approach and has already been applied in, for example, sociological media theory, to capture digital (dis)connectivity, media consumption and media abstinence.[15] Dis:connectivity is a new approach to global history, which we global dis:connect have already used productively and which focuses neither on interconnectedness nor on deglobalisation exclusively. Rather, as Roland Wenzlhuemer writes, it is about a ‘tension between processes of entanglement and disentanglement’,[16] which means that global connections always contain interruptions, detours and voids, be they transport routes, communication channels, escape routes or capital flows. For exile research, the concept of dis:connectivity can illuminate both the actors (persons) and actants (objects). That is precisely the purpose behind examining Flieg’s photographs, which are connected to each other as successive images on a negative strip. Yet, there is an interstice, a gap between them. Theoretically, two images on 35-mm film could be separated by only a few moments, as it was possible to take up to 36 images in succession with the Leica camera. Flieg, however, took the photographs and put the camera aside, not using it while in transit. Therefore, no photograph exists of this passage into exile, at least not on this film and not with this camera. It can be assumed that he did not want to draw attention to himself, at least towards the beginning of his journey, which led to Italy over the Brenner Pass. On the ship — I sadly don’t know the exact route — no photographs were taken with the Leica either. Absence, the blank space marked in black on the strip, thus stands for a journey that was not visually documented. Absence, as Ulrike Lehmann writes, refers to a former presence and what has now disappeared: ‘The absent presupposes the present. ’[17] But the space in-between also evidences the dis:connective relationship between home and abroad, between the origin and the terminus of the journey that was to separate Flieg almost permanently from the city of Chemnitz and from Germany. He only returned on the occasion of his first solo exhibition in Germany at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in 2008, almost 70 years after he had emigrated.[18] The film strip can also be understood as a timeline in which the direction runs from left to right, corresponding to the numbering of the images from 10 (Chemnitz) to 11 (São Paulo). Timelines are culturally bound. Where Latin script predominates, they run from left to right (i.e. as one reads), and where Arabic prevails, they are ordered from right to left (again according to the direction of reading). In everyday life, time is perceived as a trajectory that always runs irreversibly in one direction towards a final state.[19] This negative strip, however, also allows for another interpretation, namely time as something that runs from exilein two directions separated by the dividing space. There is a time before exile and a time of exile or post-exile. These times are not characterised by succession, but by the difference and divergence of experiences and of cultural and linguistic spaces. Time and space — the latter as a variable often used for flight, exile and migration — form an important connection. One could equally speak of dis:connective times and dis:connective spaces. Incidentally, Hans Günter Flieg found the film strip with the two photos from Chemnitz and São Paulo among his early photos only many decades later, when he was preparing a retrospective of his works for the Museu da Imagem de do Som in São Paulo in 1981. Through this find, he was able to recall the time of his emigration with temporal distance, thus creating connectivity. [1] Michael Nungesser, ‘Chemnitz Liegt Bei São Paulo. Der Fotograf Hans Günter Flieg’, ed. Ingrid Mössinger and Katharina Metz, 2008. [2] Agi Straus, Interview mit der Malerin Agi Straus, São Paulo, 15 April 2013, https://kuenste-im-exil.de/KIE/Content/DE/Objekte/flieg-interview.html?cms_x=4&catalog=1; Nungesser, ‘Chemnitz Liegt Bei São Paulo. Der Fotograf Hans Günter Flieg’. [3] Tilo Richter, ed., Der Kassberg. Ein Chemnitzer Lese- Und Bilderbuch (Leipzig: Passage-Verlag, 1996). [4] Ingrid Mössinger and Katharina Metz, eds., in Hans Günter Flieg: Dokumentarfotografie Aus Brasilien (1940-1970) (Bielefeld: Kerber Verlag, 2008), 48–49; Sylvia Asmus, in ......Mehr Vorwärts Als Rückwärts Schauen... (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2013). [5] Hans Günter Flieg, Interview des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933 - 1945 mit Hans Günter Flieg : São Paulo, 18.04.2013 / Interview und Bild: Sylvia Asmus und Jochanan Shelliem, 18 April 2013, https://d-nb.info/1059580241. [6] Alfred Hendricks, ‘Menschen unterwegs. Mobilität als Erfolgsstrategie’, in Unterwegs. Nomaden früher und heute, ed. Alfred Hendricks (Gütersloh: Linnemann, 2003), 8–11. [7] Birgit Haehnel, in Regelwerk und Umgestaltung. Nomadistische Denkweisen in der Kunstwahrnehmung nach 1945 (Berlin: Reimer, 2007), 29; T. J. Demos, in The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis (Verona: Electa, 2017), 18–26. [8] Caren Kaplan, Questions of Travel. Postmodern Discourses of Displacement (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 1996). [9] Thomas Oellermann, ‘Wenzel Jaksch Und Die Seliger-Gemeinde’, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 27 November 2021, https://www.fes.de/themenportal-geschichte-kultur-medien-netz/artikelseite/wenzel-jaksch. [10] Peter Gross, ‘Der Nomade’, in Diven, Hacker, Spekulanten. Sozialfiguren der Gegenwart, ed. Stephan Moebius and Markus Schroer (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010), 316–25. [11] Denis Canguilhem, ‘En Collaboration Avec Le Soleil. Victor Hugo, Photographies de l’exil (Cat. Exp.), Textes de F. Heilbrun, Q. Bajac, P. Néagu, N. Savy, S. Rouleau, F. Rodari, Paris, Paris-Musées/Réunion Des Musées Nationaux, 1998’, n.d., https://journals.openedition.org/etudesphotographiques//200. [12] Todd Gustavson, Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2009); Erich Stenger, Die Geschichte Der Kleinbildkamera Bis Zur Leica (Frankfurt am Main, 1949). [13] Burcu Dogramaci, in Fotografieren Und Forschen: Wissenschaftliche Expeditionen Mit Der Kamera Im Türkischen Exil Nach 1933, 1. (Marburg: ‎ Jonas Verlag, 2013). [14] ‘Orchideen S.O.S.’, 20 December 2021, https://brasilienportal.ch/wissen/brasilien-report/kurz-reportagen/orchideen-sos/. [15] Pepita Hesselberth, ‘Discourses on Disconnectivity and the Right to Disconnect’, no. vol. 20, 5 (8 June 2017). [16] Roland Wenzlhuemer, ‘Dis:Konnektivität Und Krise’, 12 November 2020, https://www.blog.cas.uni-muenchen.de/topics/global-worlds/dis-konnektivitaet-und-krise. [17] Ulrike Lehmann, ‘Ästhetik Der Absenz. Ihre Rituale Des Verbergens Und Der Verweigerung. Eine Kunstgeschichtliche Betrachtung’, in Ästhetik Der Absenz. Bilder Zwischen Anwesenheit Und Abwesenheit, ed. Ulrike Lehmann and Peter Weibel (München/Berlin: Klinckhardt & Biermann, 1994), 42–74. [18] Hans Günter Flieg, in Hans Günter Flieg: Dokumentarfotografie Aus Brasilien (1940-1970), ed. Ingrid Mössinger (Bielefeld: Kerber Verlag, 2008), 8. [19] Erhard Keppler, Zeitliches. Vom Umgang mit der Zeit seit der Antike. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Zeitbegriffs (Katlenburg-Lindau: Copernicus, 2007).

bibliography

Asmus, Sylvia, and Marlen Eckl, editors, ‘... mehr vorwärts als rückwärts schauen ... ’. Das deutschsprachige Exil in Brasilien 1933-1945 / ‘... olhando mais para frente do que para trás ... ’. O exílio de língua alemã no Brasil 1933-1945 (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2013) Demos, T.J. ‘Charting a Course. Exile, Diaspora, Nomads, Refugees. A Genealogy of Art and Migration’, in The Restless Earth, exh. cat. Fondazione La Triennale di Milano. Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (Verona: Mondadori Electa, 2017), 18-26. Dogramaci, Burcu, Fotografieren und Forschen. Wissenschaftliche Expeditionen mit der Kamera im türkischen Exil nach 1933 (Marburg: Jonas, 2013), 29 and 81 En collaboration avec le soleil. Victor Hugo. Photographies de l’exil, exh. cat. Musée d’Orsay et Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris, 1998 Flieg, Hans Günter. “Interview on 18 April 2013, video, https://kuenste-im-exil.de/KIE/Content/DE/Objekte/flieg-interview.html?cms_x=4&catalog=1, accessed 3.4.2022. Gross, Peter, ‘Der Nomade’, in Diven, Hacker, Spekulanten. Sozialfiguren der Gegenwart, edited by Stephan Moebius and Markus Schroer (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010), 316-325. Gustavson, Todd, Camera. A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2009). Haehnel, Birgit, Regelwerk und Umgestaltung. Nomadistische Denkweisen in der Kunstwahrnehmung nach 1945 (Berlin: Reimer, 2006) Hans Günter Flieg. Dokumentarfotografie aus Brasilien, edited by Ingrid Mössinger and Katharina Metz, exh. cat. Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2008). Hendricks, Alfred, ‘Menschen unterwegs. Mobilität als Erfolgsstrategie’, in idem, editor, Unterwegs. Nomaden früher und heute (Gütersloh: Siegbert Linnemann, 2003), 8-11. Hesselberth, Pepita, ‘Discourses on Disconnectivity and the Right to Disconnect’, in New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 5, 2018, 1994–2010. Kaplan, Caren, Questions of Travel. Postmodern Discourses of Displacement (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 1996) Keppler, Erhard, Zeitliches. Vom Umgang mit der Zeit seit der Antike. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Zeitbegriffs (Katlenburg-Lindau: Projekte-Verlag Cornelius, 2007). Lehmann, Ulrike, ‘Ästhetik der Absenz. Ihre Rituale des Verbergens und der Verweigerung. Eine kunstgeschichtliche Betrachtung’, in Ästhetik der Absenz. Bilder zwischen Anwesenheit und Abwesenheit, edited by Ulrike Lehmann and Peter Weibel (Munich/Berlin: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1994), 42-74. Nungesser, Michael. “Chemnitz liegt bei São Paulo. Der Fotograf Hans Günter Flieg, in: Hans Günter Flieg. Dokumentarfotografie aus Brasilien, hg. v. Ingrid Mössinger und Katharina Metz, Ausst.-Kat. Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz 2008, S. 10-14 Oellermann, Thomas, ‘Wenzel Jaksch und die Seliger-Gemeinde’, 27.11.2021, https://www.fes.de/themenportal-geschichte-kultur-medien-netz/artikelseite/wenzel-jaksch, accessed 3.4.2022. Richter, Tilo, editor, Der Kaßberg. Ein Chemnitzer Lese- und Bilderbuch (Leipzig: Passage-Verlag, 1996). Stenger, Erich, Die Geschichte der Kleinbildkamera bis zur Leica (Frankfurt/Main: Umschau 1949). Wenzlhuemer, Roland. ‘Dis:konnektivität und Krise’, CAS LMU Blog, 12 November 2020, https://www.blog.cas.uni-muenchen.de/topics/global-worlds/dis-konnektivitaet-und-krise, accessed 4 April 2022.

citation information

Dogramaci, Burcu. ‘Nomadic Camera: Photography, Exile and Dis:Connectivity’. Institute Website. Blog, Global Dis:Connect (blog), 8 February 2022. https://www.globaldisconnect.org/08/02/nomadic-camera-photography-exile-and-disconnectivity/?lang=en.

This post has also appeared in issue 1.1 of our in-house journal, static.

Dogramaci, Burcu. ‘Nomadic Camera: Photography, Exile and Dis:Connectivity’. Static. Thoughts and Research from Global Dis:Connect, 2022.

2 August 2022