NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES
BEUYS BLEIBT. BEUYS – A CLOSE UP Rosa von der Schulenburg
“I know that it is inappropriate to narrate a photograph.” Hubertus v. Amelunxen1 quotes this first sentence from Michel Foucault’s La pensée, l’émotion. He goes on to discuss the desire “to begin a narrative precisely where it has found an end in our observation – in photography, which has elevated the becoming of an end to the status of an image”. “But one hesitates and is doubtful”, says Amelunxen, “about language being able to catch up with photography retrospectively”, concluding: “Our desire relapses into language.” For members of my guild (especially for readers of images and iconographers), the desire to approach the per se unattainable goal of narrating photography whilst being constantly reminded that words fail to catch up is, and always will be, strong. Nevertheless, read on.
