The Aesthetics of Photographic Production by Andrea Jaeger

This exposition forms part of the research project exploring the often-overlooked sensory and material facets of photographic production, challenging the traditional focus solely on the visual aspect of photographs. The research questions the prevailing view that understanding photography is limited to analysing the final image, suggesting instead that the process of making a photograph—its production in real-world environments such as laboratories, factories, and manufacturing spaces—holds equal aesthetic significance. The aim is twofold: to redirect attention to processes of photographic making, exploring the aesthetic dimension beyond the photograph itself, and to examine how this shift influences the overall understanding of photographic practice. Employing practice-based research across diverse photographic settings, this study uncovers the aesthetic nuances of C-type printing processes, including the tensioning, fogging, and tearing of photosensitive paper. It adopts an event-centric viewpoint, moving beyond the visual to explore multisensory handlings—listening, touching, and feeling—that are integral to photographic production, and acknowledges the contributions of more-than-human agency in photographic making. This approach allows for a multi-modal presentation of findings, combining traditional written analysis with experiential expositions to highlight the importance of non-visual outputs in photographic making. The contributions of this research are manifold. Firstly, it critically reviews the dominant focus on the visual analysis of photographs, advocating for a broader understanding that includes the tactile and auditory dimensions of photographic making. Secondly, by immersing in the physical environments of photographic production, it provides empirical insights into the everyday practices that remain hidden from view. Thirdly, the study pioneers an artistic research methodology that emphasises showing over telling, utilising a variety of exhibition formats to convey the embodied nature of photographic making. Lastly, through in-depth case examples, it uncovers the complex interplay of materials, technology, and both human and non-human agency, suggesting a more nuanced concept of photographic practice that surpasses the conventional visual-centric, human-centric and photograph-centric paradigm. By advocating for a comprehensive view that embraces the sensory and material complexities of photography, this thesis enriches the medium's aesthetic understanding beyond the photograph as centre.

Sensuousness in places of photographic production

This exposition offers first-hand encounters within the real-world production settings of the two photographic laboratories Bayeux London and Make it Easy Lab Nottingham, the photographic factory Polaroid Enschede and the photographic manufacturer FujiFilm Tilburg that I had been priviledged doing fieldwork with.

This portfolio of fieldwork evidence exposes the sensual and aesthetic moments I have witnessed in photographic environments such as the sounds and bodies of production, the tactile handling and aural sensing.

I immersed myself in the lab’s procedures, ‘dived in’, waited for decisive moments in flows of production, with a particular interest in actions, voices, sounds,

smells, haptics and the self-logics of processes and machinery. My curiosity is piqued when the flow of the usual is disrupted, comes to a halt or, introducing agency that ‘actively’ takes its own direction in making aesthetic sense. I recorded sounds, made images; I have written up fieldnotes about the field experience in general, zooming in on particular decisive moments of disruptive beauty, inexplicable actions, discarded materials and deviant behaviour.

Extract of field note from first field visit to the photographic laboratory Bayeux in central London, one of the UK’s best known high-end full service commercial photographic labs, on May 3, 2016.

MAKE IT EASY LAB NOTTINGHAM

BAYEUX LONDON

FUJIFILM NETHERLANDS

POLAROID NETHERLAND

Tip

Tip