This field is dedicated to tracking down photography projects, which revolve around a philosopher or have been inspired by his life, an aspect of his work or a specific concept
Vilém Flusser
In Pursuit of an Apparition Hands can Miss the Object
In Pursuit of an Apparition Hands can Miss the Object is a collaborative project between Maria Ahmed and Sarah-Jane Field, 2024. The title is drawn from Vilem Flusser’s prophetic 1985 text “Into the Universe of Technical Images”, which urges artists to creatively play and disrupt the “totalitarian circuitry” of contemporary image culture. Maria Ahmed and Sarah-Jane Field work with and in response to generative images, using collage strategies of fragmentation, mixing and displacement, provoking multiple readings and questions.
Generative images are placed in conversation with pictures from photography’s messy history: darkroom mistakes, images for technical instruction, phone snaps, scans, stock images and reproductions ripped from old books. Through the rhythm of this presentation, images push and pull against one another in a performance of control and resistance.
Maria Ahmed & Sarah-Jane Field
Photographer
Maria Ahmed investigates historic and contemporary languages of the image through collage and appropriation, with a practice encompassing books, prints and moving image. Her self-published artist’s books have been shortlisted for international book awards including Images Vevey, Belfast Photofestival, Skinnerboox/Fotografia Europea and Fiebre. She held her first solo exhibition Slips and Burns at Photofusion, London in 2023. She lives and works in London and holds an MA in Photography Arts from the University of Westminster (Distinction).
Sarah-Jane Field aims to explore the technological and linguistic changes we are living through. She was a photographer, but now enjoys working with an expanded definition of the image, encompassing optical, sonic, and haptic elements, while hoping to reject traditional media-related value systems. Her approach involves mixing various materials – from tinfoil and textiles to AI-generated content and organic matter. All are languagematerial (or are they materiallanguage ?) This results in projects that traipse across and through boundaries, manifesting simultaneously in print, online, or installation, with image, text and performance.
