Light and Photomedia

Light and Photomedia
A New History and Future of the Photographic Image
By Jai McKenzie

ISBN 9781780762784
192 Pages

Light and Photomedia proposes that, regardless of technological change, the history and future of photomedia is essentially connected to light. It is a fundamental property of photomedia, binding with space and time to form and inform new, explicitly light-based structures and experiences. Jai McKenzie identifies light-space-time structures throughout the history of photomedia, from the early image machines through analogue and digital image machines to the present day. She proposes that they will continue to develop in the future and takes us to future image machines of the year 2039. With the use of the theories of Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard and Vilem Flusser, featuring artists including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nam June Paik, Yves Klein, Eadweard Muybridge, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman and Michael Snow, as well as their photographic images, Light and Photomedia places the reader in a new history and future which, although mostly overlooked by the canon of photomedia theory, is an essential line of enquiry for contemporary thinking and dialogue in photography.

List of illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1
Early image machines
The invention of photography c.1830—c.1870
Luminous beginnings
Light source: the origin of the image machines
A sociological perspective
Light-space-timeImage-space
Seeing machines
Ever brighter: moving on from the glow of the early image machines
Chapter 2
Analogue image machinesc.1870—c.1990
Super vision: the analogue era
Standing still: the instantaneous capture of light-time
Moving quickly: Photofuturism and light-time
Cinematic light-time
Still and moving light-time
Light-space in the analogue era
You press the button: forming image-spaces everywhere
At the movies: image-spaces in cinema
Proofs of reality
Photomontage
Video art
Leap into the void
Chapter 3
Digital image machinesc.1990—2010
Dream machines: technology at the speed of lightImage-spaces of the digital era ‘All that we see or seem’
Light up: the screen space of digital photomedia
At the speed of light
Slow motion: light-time in the digital era
Void space
Digital photomedia & the loss of physical reality
The digital image-space: a matter of light-space-time
Chapter 4
Future image machines
2039: two hundred years after the invention of photography
The future?
The photomedia technology of tomorrow
The artist of 2039
Connected to nothing
In the ‘photographic universe’
At the speed of light The future is here
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Author

Jai McKenzie is an artist and academic based between Berlin and Sydney.