MORTAL MAPS. CLAUDIA ANGELMAIER, BOGOMIR ECKER, LINDA FREGNI NAGLER, CLAUDIO POGO, LAURA SCHAWELKA, KATHRIN SONNTAG

In the organizer's words:

As a reproducible medium, photography is constantly reinventing itself. As a technical medium, it is subject to the fashions of the companies that provide the materials and tools. In the process, its history and the existing are constantly being received and renegotiated. From the now antiquated postcard to the AI-generated image, these loops are constantly bringing pixels to the surface.

Each present thus creates its own pictorial pasts, which either overlap or stand for opposing positions. Photography is a medium that documents these transitions and makes them visible. The different methods of sorting and highlighting stand for this process of image memories. Beginning with Aby Warburg, we are led via archiving possibilities to hashtags and finally to automated labeling. Methods become visible for finding one's way through the constantly growing flood of images and acquiring image competence.

Due to the temporal localization of photographic image and material languages, the melancholic and backward-looking is an immanent part of such an occupation. However, it is the clearly articulated artistic stance that consciously makes a statement about the present in a gesture of the indirect. Each artist is shaped by their own socio-cultural background and brings an individual signature to their approach to the technopoetic heritage and our contemporary possibilities of image-making.

The exhibition Mortal Maps shows these image reflections through the positions of Claudia Angelmaier, Bogomir Ecker, Linda Fregni Nagler, Claudio Pogo, Laura Schawelka and Kathrin Sonntag.

Curated by Sebastian Riemer and Christoph Westermeier.

The exhibition is part of the düsseldorf photo+ Biennale for Visual and Sonic Media.