W8 Context & Audiences

How different contexts of photographs can change the way we look at images.

Photographs ones sees on a single post card, packages, galleries on the wall, books, magazines in series or separate. The scale can differ also. A couple of years ago I went to two exhibitions with original images from before 1900 and most of them were printer very small (sometimes just a contactprint) but sublime. To see them you had to be very close to the images and it became intimate. I liked the effect because I was alone with the image and the experiment at that moment; they were to small to look at with two people at the same time.

The way we look at images especially in a museum was what was different with an exhibition from Otto Snoek in the Photography Museum in Rotterdam in 2017. The photos were not framed on the wall but on big pallets with hundredths of A0 posters. Visitors could take the image they liked the most home. The side effect was that one could see what the most liked image was.Tearing off a poster at first felt a bit uncomfortable because you doubt it is really allowed. After all, that is not something that is usual in a museum because the photo then becomes a kind of use / disposable item.