On Redaction: Heaps and Wholes, or Who Empties The Circular File?

The article's main topic is ""Creating the Canon: Writing
(photography) history'' (the title of the original lecture,
delivered at the Talking Pictures conference, Totonto, 1987,
from which this paper is derived). The author states that
""there are surely more mulch heaps of imagery unredacted by
their makers in photography than in any other visual art
medium'', noting that ""the unredacted heap has peculiar
attraction to certain types of curatorial and critical
temperaments''. Discussed are the temperaments of Szarkowski (on
Winogrand's unredacted archive, on Diane Arbus, E.J. Bellocq,
Eugene Atget, and Josef Albers), Julia Scully (on Michael
Disfarmer's ""Heber Springs Portrait''), Michael Lesy (on the
amateur photographer Rizzuto), and others. The authors main
argument concerns the concept of oeuvre: ""that body of work
that has been prepared for public presentation by the maker
him/herself, or at least under his/her supervision''. The author
stresses here the necessity of scholarship, and an annotation
distinguishing between images redacted by the photographer and
those selected by others.


Citaten:
Sontag, S.: On Photography (1973)
Coleman, A.D.: Silverplating the Dandelion (Views, II/2, 1981)
Weber, N.F.: The Photographs of Josef Albers (1987)
Lesy, M.: Visible Light (1985)