Conceptual Photography in the Mid-19th Century?
Within the 7th Photography Days of Tošo Dabac Archives, held in Zagreb on 23 October, Dr.Sc. Monika Faber, an art historian and the director of Photoinstitut Bonartes in Vienna, delivered a lecture on conceptual photography. This renowned curator and the author of numerous exhibitions which she has organized at Albertina, and the theorist who has – viewed within a socio-cultural context –introducedthe prominent authors and phenomena in photography, presented to the Zagreb’s audience the early examples of conceptual photography based on documenting Vienna’s city walls in the mid-19th century.
It was her thesis on the existence of conceptual photography at such an early stage in the history of photography that caught our attention. Without possessing knowledge about the old, the new becomes less interesting and impossible to understand, she asserted at the beginning of an interesting lecture supported by an abundance of examples which excluded landscape photography and classic panoramas, only covering the photographs documenting the military state of Austria which was establishing its empire in the mid-19th century. In addition to impressive military barracks and carefully designed military infrastructure, this new empire needed to build new urban spaces – the wide avenues that not only stood as proof of belonging to the European cultural space, but also marked the departure from the dark medieval urban topography to the new public spaces bathed in light along the River Danube.
The photographers’ volition to represent what they wanted to, rather than what they saw, as well as using the camera as their tool is the mainstay of Faber’s thesis. Most of the examples are taken from Alois Auer’s collection, the director of the Austrian State Printing House – one of the most modern printing houses in the world in the mid-19th century – where numerous illustrated publications were printed, which testify to Auer’s great interest in science and technology. His institution possessed the technology which enabled experimentation with lenses and capturing the details, which was impossible to achieve in other studies. For example, Monika Faber showed us the image of the camera which was carried to the St. Stephen’s bell tower before it underwent restoration. The huge wooden camera was almost as twice as large than the glass plates (87 x 87 cm) which suggest show delicate the work carried out truly was.
The period on which this lecture focused is also interesting because of the fact that only 5% of people living in that time – around the year 1860 – could afford only one photograph to be taken during their life time. It speaks volumes on the importance of photography and the different circumstances of the medium which has undergone incredible changes since then.
As we found out, Auer did not want to compete with small studios which lived off portraits, and he also planned to engage in microphotography. But what attracts attention is the specific approach to photography (Auer’s and people working in his studio) in which the medium is used to show something particular, rather than typical. This was achieved by combining images in a specific way, for instance, by arranging them in panoramic scenes shot with a camera designed by Auer himself. Due to his inventions, it was finally possible to capture the entire building, and everything was subordinated to the needs of the Monarchy (its propaganda, politics, etc.), rather than the creation of beautiful images.
He was not interested in individual photographs because they did not reveal the scale of things, but more photographs put together did. In Faber’s opinion, Auer managed to conquer reality without giving way to a subjective point of view. His objective was not to capture time, but a specific point in time when something happened, connecting numerous individual frames which, when put together, did notproduce a realistic image, which, according to Monika Faber, is quite enough to consider it as a concept.
Sandra Križić Roban
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