B.C.: So “Before & After” goes beyond a certain media reflectivity, because here you are talking not only about the medium of photography, but also about the developmental conditions in terms of cultural history and the circumstances of production that determine our conception of the picture within the tension of the original and the reproduction.

 

A.W.: Yes. The question I began with was how can you put these pictures together? How do they inform each other? As opposed to the canon of pictures, this little archive is more a network of parallel narrative threads that offer the viewer different starting points. It is about the idea that these spaces tell their own stories about their cultural context, about the people who use the spaces, and about the apparatuses and conditions in these spaces, and also about the moment when the release is pushed, i.e. when the person turns into his depiction. The sequence of pictures is interrupted at one point, where the focus is on role behaviour in front of and behind the camera.

Barbara Clausen and Anita Witek

“Becoming Visible”, in: Camera Austria International, 94/2006, p.37 

 

 

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Installation View, “Before & After”, Murray Guy, New York 2006

Photo: Anita Witek