Dans un Etat proche de l’Ohio : IOWA de Nancy Rexroth
In 2017, Iowa, a book of photographs by American artist Nancy Rexroth first published in 1977 and long out of print, came out in a revised and augmented edition. In this book originally conceived as a photographic evocation of the author’s childhood memories, Rexroth photographed in various Ohio loc...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
2019-12-01
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| Series: | Sillages Critiques |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/8156 |
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| Summary: | In 2017, Iowa, a book of photographs by American artist Nancy Rexroth first published in 1977 and long out of print, came out in a revised and augmented edition. In this book originally conceived as a photographic evocation of the author’s childhood memories, Rexroth photographed in various Ohio locations (as well as a few other Midwestern places) what she named Iowa, after the State where she used to visit relatives as a child. She worked with a rudimentary plastic toy camera, a Diana, causing systematic optical distortions. As a result, Iowa supposedly traces an experience in a time and a space when / where it never actually took place. This article proposes to examine the specific circumstances for the viewer’s reception of this enigmatic object as it indirectly questions Barthes’s famous idea that a photograph can only record something « that has been ». By becoming interchangeable, Ohio and Iowa lead to a re-owning of what endlessly escapes photographic capture (taking place / taking a picture). Conversely, republishing the book in a different context and a new form somehow re-enacts the initial project of photographing the past. |
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| ISSN: | 1272-3819 1969-6302 |