{"id":79768,"date":"2024-12-12T15:19:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T13:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/?post_type=image-matters&p=79768"},"modified":"2026-10-20T15:41:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T13:41:17","slug":"complementary-testimonies","status":"publish","type":"image-matters","link":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/en\/image-matters\/image-con-text-en\/complementary-testimonies\/","title":{"rendered":"image\/con\/text"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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\r\n \"\"\r\n\r\n <\/figure>\r\n\r\n \r\n Deutschland (GER), Niedersachsen, Hannover, 30.10.2019 – Symposium [IMAGE MATTERS] und image\/con\/text an der Hochschule Hannover. Im Bild: Diskussion: Found in Translation mit Prof. Dr. Friedrich Weltzien, Alisha Sett (Sprecherin), Max Pinckers, Prof. Dr. Karen Fromm und Joan Fontcuberta. <\/span>\r\n \r\n \r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\n\n\n
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IMAGE\/CON\/TEXT<\/strong><\/h1>\n

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Documentary practices between journalism, art and activism<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

What is the relationship of image and text?<\/strong> Through what strategies do texts find their way into images, and what kind of textuality do these images reveal? To what extent are the verbal and the visual interwoven in discourse and narrative? The textuality of photography and the associated notion that images can be read as texts has been a well-established concept in both practice and theory since the 1970s and 1980s. However, current discourses on documentary increasingly express an understanding that seeks to conceptualise the relationship between visual and verbal media as a heterogeneous field of representational practices. Building on the interweaving of representation and discourse and the intertwining of visual and verbal experience, as described by W.J.T. Mitchell, amongst others, they understand the image\u2013text relationship as one in which the spheres of the readable and the visible have always inevitably intermingled. By combining various forms of documentation and testimony, current projects are therefore increasingly focusing on image-text combinations and their complementary nature. In doing so, they recognise that no document, no testimony, can in itself provide direct evidence, but always entails the possibility of fiction. Moving beyond the demand for unambiguous visual and textual clarity, they address their own contextuality as a prerequisite for meaning and impact. For them, meaning arises within every publication context, with every reception, and through every mode of reading and viewing; it is not fixed but fluid, circulating and migrating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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In 2020, the publication<\/strong> \u2018image\/con\/text. Documentary Practices between Journalism, Art and Activism\u2019 was published. The central question was: How can, and how should, one give images impact? The search for new narrative forms in the fields of photojournalism and documentary photography \u2013 forms that broaden our perspective beyond the boundaries of the conventional understanding of the documentary form \u2013 was a key driving force behind the previous [IMAGE MATTERS]<\/a><\/strong> publication \u2018Images in Conflict \/ Bilder im Konflikt<\/a>\u2019. The question of the possibilities of the documentary form and the development of visual narratives that subvert stereotypes and traditional viewing habits is further explored in the volume \u2018image\/con\/text\u2019: the contributions focus in particular on the textuality and contextuality of documentary practices and the exploration of their boundaries \u2013 specifically, the relationship between art, documentation and journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n

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In \u2018Photography Against the Grain\u2019 (1984), Allan Sekula wrote: \u2018Against the photoessayistic promise of \u201clife\u201d caught by the camera, I sought to work from within a world already replete with signs.\u2019 Treating photographs as autonomous, self-explanatory windows on the world does justice neither to the complexity of reality nor to the intricacy of our systems of representation. Given that any mode \u2013 whether photographic or text-based \u2013 is liable to suffer intrinsic inadequacies, documentary practice tends to be most productive where multiple forms of representation synergise. \u2018image\/con\/text\u2019 builds on this idea of complementarity. Journalistic images in particular utilise \u2013 and require \u2013 context to convey meaning. Often this means captions. But accompanying images and\/or documents can also accomplish the same effect. As well as revealing the complex relationships between visual and verbal mediatisations, this also creates a layering and nesting of meaning that is increasingly employed by documentary storytellers to narrate and contextualise hidden stories.<\/p>\n

\u2018image\/con\/text\u2019 examines image\/text relations in notable contemporary and historical projects, focussing particularly on the medium of the photobook, but also encompassing film, multimedia and the comic genre. The strategies examined bring together journalistic, artistic and activist positions, weaving fact and fiction to reveal the constellations of power in the process of representation. Photographic narrators are increasingly employing the possibilities of deliberately generated context, not least to expand the scope of the narratable.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

The book was published in 2020 by Reimer Verlag, Berlin, and simultaneously by arthistoricum as an open-access publication available for free download.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2192 Table of contents<\/a>
\u2192 Book launch video<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Karen Fromm<\/a>, Sophia Greiff<\/a>, Malte Radtki<\/a> and Anna Stemmler<\/a>

Reimer Verlag<\/a>, Berlin 2020, with texts in German and English
352 pages, 168 illustrations<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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