59/60 | 1997

With some delay, due in part to the fact that as a laboratory for photography and theory CAMERA AUSTRIA, in addition to this journal, simultaneously pursues a number of other projects – last but not least the SYMPOSIUM ON PHOTOGRAPHY VII: “Agents and Agencies. Photography between Discourse and Document II”, taking place from Oct. 17 – 19, 1997 – we now proudly present the publication on last year’s symposium which, as we think, in its size and content justifies the considerable editorial efforts.
This issue focuses on the “Fish Story” project as a starting point for a now textual dialog with artists and authors, a dialog that also characterised the symposium itself resulting in the fact that the authors revised their lectures in view of the publication (unfortunately, for health reasons, Chang–Kyong Park could not complete his contribution). “As the three days unfolded, we saw works that attempt to construct both critical readings and aesthetic interpretations of technical and instrumental systems: factories, machines, material flows, modes of production. We also saw works that seek to address the construction of subjectivies, subjectivities of the individual, but also of nation, class, gender and race, within and against the flux of these technical and instrumental systems.” (Allan Sekula) In addition to a detailed positioning of “Fish Story” within various contexts ALLAN SEKULA also presents a new project with “Dead Letter Office”, a work in progress which continues the questioning of the global phenomenon of industrialisation.
MICHAEL ASHER’s project for “D&S Ausstellung” in Hamburg is directed at the structures of economy as they can be traced in the shifting of waste over the (meanwhile historic) borders between East and West Germany. Both HARTMUT BITOMSKY’s “VW Komplex” and JAMES WELLING’s “Wolfsburg” project use the Volkswagen works in Wolfsburg as a starting point for tracing the complex relations between the individual, economy and the mechanised environment of the present and especially the interconnection of these relations with German National Socialist history when industrialisation became evident as a means of power. In their discussion of developments in urban planning in Berlin as well as of the German Museum in Bonn, BÜROBERT strongly oppose the technologisation of everyday life which, mediated ideologically as being consumer-friendly, service-orientated and security–increasing, mutates into new forms of social exclusion.
KRISTIN ROSS uses the automobile culture in post–war France as an example to show how industrial production is intertwined with the symbolic reorganisation of an entire society: as a central “figure” in films, novels and the press, as a strange and almost mythical object the car started to structure the everyday life and desire of the individual. BRIGITTE WERNEBURG concentrates on “Fish Story” as a current documentary narrative, as a re-invention of documentarism, thematising art-immanent links and references, while HERTA WOLF points out technicity and discursivity as moments of the philosophical debate referred to by Allan Sekula in his important essay “The Traffic in Photographs”. In his film “Bless their Little Hearts”, finally, BILLY WOODBERRY, portrays the “claustrophobic confinement of a geography of unemployment in South Central Los Angeles”, based on the touching story of a black family.
In conclusion, as always you’ll find an extensive information section on works of young photographers (FORUM), current EXHIBITIONS and BOOKS, as well as NEWS from the international world of photography. The KALENDARIUM provides an overview of photography and media exhibitions in the second half of 1997. Hoping you’ll enjoy reading this issue,

Manfred Willmann, Reinhard Braun, October 1997