Photography at the Event Horizon: The Appearance and Disappearance of a Medium

Abstract

Photography at the Event Horizon: The Appearance and Disappearance of a Medium was inspired by the 2019 unveiling of the world’s first ever photograph of a black hole in the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy and uses the metaphor of a black hole to undertake an onto-epistemological study of the medium of photography.

This research aligns contemporary photographic processes, images, and the current state of the medium itself to the qualities of black holes as a key metaphor for understanding the photographic ontology. This metaphor is extended further to contend that early photography can be likewise aligned to the formation of a star. Thus, this research examines the ontology of the photographic medium at two points in time: its star-like appearance(s) in the nineteenth century, and what I argue is its black hole-like disappearance in the twenty-first century. Where a star emits light, a black hole removes it. Where early photography aimed to capture light, contemporary photography no longer needs it.

Through practice-led research and using contemporary art practice as the means to examine photographic ontology, this research shifts the discourse from the often-passive response to photographs that are seen but not made by theorists, to the active creation of photographic work by creative practitioners that articulate the current conditions of the medium. In doing so, this research engages with the shifting territory of photography’s representational functions. From its past as a presentation of the “what-has-been” as coined by Roland Barthes, to the new condition of what Mette Sandbye calls the “what-is-going-on” of contemporary photographic culture. By drawing upon my own practice-led research and the works of other contemporary artists, this research stakes a claim for photographic practice as an eloquent contributor to contemporary debates around ontologies of photography at its beginning and at its end.