Andrea Jaeger

Germany, United Kingdom °1978
research interests: photographic practice, posthuman photography, soft matter, fail, Nonrepresentational Theory, nonlinearity, artistic research, practical practice, sensous knowledge, sensory ethnography
affiliation: Fine Arts @Nottingham Trent University
en

I am a photographic artist exploring failure and deviation in photographic production—those moments when things don't work out, when the flow is ruptured and production stops, and everything is about getting things up and running again. Yet when I sit with these moments when failure unfolds, when I look and listen and connect with their modus operandi, I can see softness in the raw materials; I can hear touch and feel the tension in total darkness. Through touch, listening and watching, I attune to the intensions and interactions of human and non-human actors as their relations and material practices expose the non-representational potency of production and photography. In the flow of photographic production, I find in the 'tensioning of', the 'tearing of‘, the shooting light onto‘ photographic paper unseen realities of sounds, artefacts and sensual experiences within these material practices. Collaborating with field partners that include Photo Parlour Nottingham, Polaroid NL, FujiFilm NL and Hahnemühle DE, I use participatory action research and studio-based experimental art practices to elucidate these material practices and their doings. This emerging 'aesthetics of production‘ is not a reflection or a representation of production. These works expose the softness and sensuousness of production and its actions, extending our view of what is fabricated beyond the photograph and questioning the narrower understanding and contextualisation of photography and production alike.

research

research expositions

  • The Aesthetics of Photographic Production: Why Material Practices Matter (last edited: 2023) author(s): Andrea Jaeger This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
    I am a photographic artist, and my research focuses on exploring the multi-sensorial and immaterial aspects of photographic practice through a practice-based approach. With this research project, I am contributing to an understanding of photographic practice that attends to aural and tactile senses as well as more-than-human agency in the making of practices to expand the discourse on photographic practice beyond traditional approaches that primarily focus on the reading of photographs. Supported by an AHRC-funded PhD grant, I studied the making of practices in various photographic production sites, including laboratories such as Bayeux London, and manufacturing plants like FujiFilm, Polaroid, and Hahnemühle. The fieldwork identified three specific photographic practices—tensioning, fogging, and tearing photosensitive paper— which were explored through artistic research methodologies. By combining fieldwork and artistic research in a bricolage approach, the study demonstrates how these practices make aesthetic sense beyond the photograph as centre. The research outcomes, including a written thesis, artworks, and artifacts presented on the 'Research Catalogue' platform, highlight the role of non-visual senses and non-human agency in the making of photographic practices. In this research, I challenge the commonly held belief that understanding what photography is, is synonymous with understanding what a photograph is (Squiers, 2014). This prevailing notion assumes that the photograph is always already produced and readily available for theoretical discussions focused on reading their meaning rather than attending to their making (Wells, 2015, p. 29). This research shifts attention to processes of making in real-world-settings of the photographic production sites, aiming to contribute to a broader understanding of photographic practice beyond the traditional confines of the photograph and the photographer as reference points. Instead of solely relying on individual approaches and the analysis of photographic works, this study shows the importance of aesthetic otherness, such as the sounds of tearing, which arise once the focus extends beyond the photograph. By activating aural and tactile senses and attending to the agency of the non-human, this research unveils the significance of more-than-visual senses and more-than-human agency in the making of photographic practice. The impact this research makes on the photographic discourse is to demonstrate how more-than-visual senses and more-than-human agency matter in the making of practices. It argues that to understand photography, one must engage with aesthetic otherness made in photographic practices, transcending the photograph as the central element.
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works

  • Walking, listening, touching (14/01/2021)
    Event: Workshop, artist(s)/author(s): Andrea Jaeger
    Walking, listening, touching WHAT IS THE ACTIVITY? This self-guided activity explores the therapeutic benefits of working with paper and our relationship with trees. After completing this activity in your own time, you’ll be invited to share your experience and creations with other participants in a workshop setting. WHY PARTICIPATE? The activity is an invitation to explore and engage hands-on with paper. Paper in its many forms—as cardboard, copying paper, newsprint, tissue paper, toilet paper, writing paper—is part of our everyday life. Looking beyond its many functions, we generally think of paper as a thin material, often white and angular. Thinking a little more about paper as material, what might we see if we could engage with paper beyond its surface, and what might we learn about where it comes from? WHAT WILL I NEED? A piece of paper Time for a rain free walk Trees WHAT SHOULD I DO? Once you have made time to set out on your walk, you might find it useful to begin by listening to your breathing as you go. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, and repeat at least ten times while walking. This will ease you into the audible walk experience. Next, begin to listen as closely as possible to the sounds that surround you as you go—birds, traffic, the wind, footsteps, your own or others’. You might decide to focus further on particular sounds and stay with them for a while. At intervals, focus again on your breathing. Look out for trees along the way. Without their leaves, trees in wintertime make fewer sounds, but their shape and presence are all the more apparent. Along your way, choose a tree to get close to. Look at it first from afar, and then move in for a closer look. Walk around the tree, looking down and listening to its sounds. Then look up while continuing to walking around the tree and listening. Gently, place your sheet of paper onto the body of the tree and stroke the paper in a repetitive motion, tracing the bark or other tree structures onto your paper. There is no right or wrong way to do it—the possibilities are endless. Keep the paper with you as you continue your walk. At the end of your walk, try to re-experience it by touching the paper’s surface, which has retained the traces that you and the tree made together. If you’d like to share your experiences—the tracings, the sounds you heard, your walking patterns—you are warmly invited to attend a workshop where we can learn together by listening with one another. ************************************************** This self-guided activity and follow-up workshop is part of Backlit's 'The Nottingham Asylum Project programme'. The self-guided activity will be introduced as part of the workshop on Sunday 7th March 2021 (11am – 1pm) and the follow-up workshop on Sunday 14th March 2021 (11am – 1pm) will be an opportunity to share the wonders of sensory walking in a group discussion that fosters sharing and listening with another.