Photography, Catastrophe, and Catastro-tourism
Opening Lecture of Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies.
It is thanks to the initiative of Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein, lecturer at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies, that Abigail Solomon-Godeau, one of today’s internationally most prominent feminist historians of art, could be won for a guest semester at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on the basis of an exchange program. Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein will stand in for Solomon-Godeau at her home university, the University of California in Santa Barbara, by lecturing there for one semester.
The opening lecture considers the issues raised by the photographic representation of catastrophe, whether that is understood in the sense of historical catastrophe (e.g., the holocaust); more recent calamities (e.g., the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, etc.); “Terrorist” bombings (in Pakistan and elsewhere); “natural” and environmental disasters such as flood or famine; or various forms of ongoing political repression (e.g., in Burma, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, etc.). Nor should we discount issues of poverty, health, and global warming that are less amenable to photographic depiction. Needless to say, as indicated by the “etceteras,” there is no lack of catastrophic subjects variously represented in photography. Although it is important to distinguish between photojournalism – part of the mass media – and the production of artists who choose catastrophe as a theme in their work, these do not exist in isolation from one another. Moreover, the representation of catastrophe in any form poses political and ethical questions that this lecture attempts to address.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau’s lecturing and publishing activities focus on postmodernism, photography, and feminism. Her publications include “Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices,” University of Minnesota Press 1991; “Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation. On the Imagery of Masculinity in French Neoclassicism,” Thames & Hudson 1997; “The Face of Difference: Gender, Race and the Politics of Self-Representation,” Duke University Press, forthcoming. Her articles are regularly published in art magazines such as “Art in America,” “Artforum,” “The Art Journal,” “Afterimage,” “Camera Obscura,” “October,” and “Screen.”