I’m beyond excited to welcome everyone to the session I’m organizing and chairing, "Camera-derie: Collaborative, Communal, and Collective Practices in Photography," at the CAA 113th Annual Conference in NYC. We’re scheduled for the first day of the conference, Wednesday, February 12, 2025, from 2:30 pm to 4 pm, at the New York Hilton Midtown.
Read moreNew exhibition review! “Isohelia and Staged Photos are in Style Again”
This is a review of these two major photo exhibitions that I saw during my research visit to Riga, Latvia, at the end of 2024: “Gleizds, Paper, Scissors” at the Pauls Stradiņš Medicine History Museum and “Binde 100–10” at the Latvian National Museum of Art.
Read moreNew research article! Art, Idealism, and Networking: Brazilian Participation in the Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965
“Art, Idealism, and Networking: Brazilian Participation in the Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965” is a commissioned research article for a book about photography in Brazil.
My draft was translated into Portuguese and published in 2024 as:
Alise Tifentale, “Arte, idealismo e rede de contatos: a participação brasileira na cultura fotoclubista global (1950–1965),” 168–192, in Helouise Costa and Heloisa Espada, eds., Fotografia moderna no Brasil, 1900–1950. Arte, saber e poder (São Paulo, IMS: 2024).
Download the PDF of the English version of my chapter, “Art, Idealism, and Networking: Brazilian Participation in the Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965”
Download the PDF of the Portuguese (published) version of my chapter: “Arte, idealismo e rede de contatos: a participação brasileira na cultura fotoclubista global (1950–1965)”
Abstract (January 2019)
“For me, the most moving aspect of looking at a salon catalogue is seeing the names of Brazilians entangled with names of artists from other parts of the world … democratically positioned as equals,” acknowledged José Oiticica Filho (1906–1964) in an article published in Boletim Foto Cine in 1951. A key figure in Brazilian postwar photography, Oiticica Filho is acknowledged as an important experimental photographer, one of the pioneers of modernist photography associated with the São Paulo photo club Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB). Little, however, is known about another aspect of his involvement with photography: parallel to his creative work, he compiled extensive data tables pertaining to hundreds of photography exhibitions throughout the world. By doing so, Oiticica Filho established a significant link between Brazilian photographers and the global photo-club culture of the 1950s.
The work of photo clubs revolved around international juried exhibitions (also referred to as salons) selected through open call. During the 1950s, photographers often relied on photo-club salons as their primary regular exhibition venues because the established systems of art museums and galleries welcomed their work only in rare exceptions. The most visible advocate of the global photo-club culture was the International Federation of Photographic Art (Fédération internationale de l'art photographique, FIAP), founded in Switzerland in 1950. Over the following decade, FIAP united and mobilized photo clubs in fifty-five countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, becoming the first post-World War II organization to provide photographers with an institutional space that existed outside the market and that transcended political and ethnic borders.
Brazil was the first non-European country to join FIAP in 1950. The founder and president of FIAP, Belgian photographer Maurice Van de Wyer (1896–1994) was a close acquaintance of Eduardo Salvatore (1914–2006), the founder and president of FCCB. Van de Wyer visited São Paulo and FCCB on a regular basis during the 1950s. While it is not clear whether Oiticica Filho and Van de Wyer ever met in person, Oiticica Filho became an active contributor to the work of FIAP. He published several statistical reports about international salons of photography, based on data he collected from salon catalogues. These reports reveal the geographic reach of the global photo-club culture in the mid-1950s, with hundreds of exhibitions every year in countries across the world. Most active exhibition participants managed to circulate tens and even hundreds of prints at a time in various salons, and among them were FCCB members such as Gertrudes Altschul (1904–1962), Francisco Albuquerque (1917–2000), Ivo Ferreira da Silva (b. 1911), Gaspar Gasparian (1899–1966), Jean Lecoq (1898–1986), and Kazuo Kawahara (b. 1905), as well as Salvatore and Oiticica Filho himself.
Oiticica Filho’s statistical work opens a broader perspective on postwar photo-club culture as a global phenomenon. Data he collected and published make a thriving, transnational field both visible and quantifiable by providing a helpful guide to the otherwise uncharted field of photo-club culture that firmly establishes Brazil as one of its creative centers.
I presented an early working version of the article at the seminar, seminar Fotografia moderna? Fragmentos de uma história (Brasil, 1900-1960) at the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS Paulista), São Paulo, Brazil, August 13-15, 2019. The seminar was organized by Helouise Costa and Heloísa Espada as part of the preparatory work for the forthcoming book.
Click here for a brief description of the seminar.
New book chapter: "How a Photographer Became an Artist: The Development of the Artistic Style of Gunārs Binde in the Cultural Context of the 1960s"
Hot off the press! I’m thrilled to see my chapter published in this book dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the most remarkable Latvian photographer Gunārs Binde.
Alise Tifentale, “How a Photographer Became an Artist: The Development of the Artistic Style of Gunārs Binde in the Cultural Context of the 1960s,” 27-41. In: Binde. 100-10, edited by Anna Binde, Alexey Murashko, and Elīza Ramza (Riga: Gunārs Binde Foundation, 2024).
Download my chapter as a PDF here!
Participating in the Photography Network symposium in Tucson, Arizona
So happy to have participated in the Photography Network symposium hosted by the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, October 25-27, 2024!
Read moreInterview for Google about the history of the selfie
Jonah Goldman Kay interviewed me for an article about the history of the selfie for Google. Read the published article here: https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/selfie-history-making-pixel-fold/
Read moreMy article included in an anthology of Central and Easter European feminist writing
So thrilled to see my article “Entering the Elusive Estate of Photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011)”, published in MoMA Post in 2021, now included in an anthology of Central and Eastern European feminist writing.
Read moreComing soon: my talk “Worldwide Photo Clubism: Building a Transnational Community During the Cold War” in Photography Network Speaker Series, October 4, 2024 (online)
The talk will be delivered via Zoom. Find the registration link and more details about the event here: https://www.photographynetwork.net/news/worldwide-photo-clubism
Read more"Camera-derie: Collaborative, Communal, and Collective Practices in Photography”: mark your calendar for our panel in the CAA 2025 in NYC!
A panel I’m organizing and chairing has just been accepted for the CAA (College Art Association) 113th Annual Conference that will take place at the New York Hilton Midtown, New York City, February 12–15, 2025. Mark your calendar and please come participate in the conversation!
Read moreServing on Paulius Petraitis’ dissertation committee: “Intermediality and Networked Meaning-Making in Contemporary Baltic Art Photography”
I had the honor to serve as an external reader on Paulius Petraitis’ dissertation committee. Paulius defended the doctoral dissertation “Intermediality and Networked Meaning-Making in Contemporary Baltic Art Photography” on June 18, 2024.
Read moreGuest lecture "Understanding Machine-Made Images from Photography to Generative AI" (January 26, 2024)
“Understanding Machine-Made Images from Photography to Generative AI: Collaborative Exercise in Response to Flusser, Azoulay, and Manovich” is a guest lecture and seminar that I was invited to deliver at the Art Academy of Latvia, January 26, 2024.
Background image above and below: details from Unknown photographer, [Occupational portrait of a woman working at a sewing machine] Daguerreotype, ca. 1853. Library of Congress collection, https://www.loc.gov/resource/ds.04496/
Together with doctoral students at the Art Academy of Latvia, we read and discussed excerpts from the writings of Vilém Flusser, Ariella Azoulay, and Lev Manovich. At the end of the seminar, the students collaboratively wrote a speculative manifesto “What is the role of photography and AI-generated images today, if today is 2124?”
Among other things, we also discussed the concepts of technical images and machine-made images as well as guessed whether a given image is a photograph or AI-generated image.
Francis Grice, photographer. [Unidentified man and woman, seated, facing front] Daguerreotype, ca. 1855. Library of Congress collection, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004664531/
Studio visits at the NARS Foundation residency program in Brooklyn, New York
On December 12, 2023, I had the honor to be invited to a studio visit and to meet some of the artists selected for the NARS Foundation international artist residency program. The New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS) Foundation is a fabulous place for any artist to work.
Moreover, I have fantastic memories of an earlier studio visit at the NARS in 2015, which resulted in me following the artists’ careers long-term. Read more about my studio visits in 2015 here!
This year, it was a true pleasure to meet Katherine Plourde, the current Program Manager, who is doing such a wonderful job of making the NARS artist residency program thrive. And again, just like in 2015, thanks go to to my dear friend Hyewon Yi for introducing us!
The artists I met:
Sue Beyer
Participating in the ASEEES (Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) conference in Philadelphia
With great excitement, I participated in the ASEEES (Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) annual conference in Philadelphia, PA, on Saturday, December 2, 2023.
Panel participants at the ASEEES in Philadelphia. From the left: Josie Johnson, Alise Tifentale, Maria Garth, Liāna Ivete Žilde, and Līga Goldberga. Photo: Alise Tifentale.
In the role of a discussant, I was part of the panel, "Informed Bodies: Decolonizing the Politics of Representation in Late Soviet Photography," together with Josie Johnson (Stanford University) as the chair, and presenters Līga Goldberga (Art Academy of Latvia/University of Latvia), Liāna Ivete Žilde (Art Academy of Latvia/University of Latvia), and Maria Garth (Rutgers University).
Two of the three presentations - papers by Līga and Maria - discussed the legacy of the artist and photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011). To me, his was a very special panel both professionally and personally, as I’m Dzividzinska’s daughter and also the curator of her archive and estate, Art Days Forever (www.artdays.net).
Brief description of the panel
“This panel focuses on the representation of women as models and photographers in late Soviet photography of the Baltic region from the 1960s and 1980s . Relying on theoretical approaches informed by gender studies, the posthumanist perspective, and critical theories such as postcolonial discourse, this panel investigates the notion of the “informed body” from three distinct vantage points: the body of the female model in nude photography and self-portraiture; the body of the photographic archive that holds traces of its biography; and the body of knowledge regarding the production of the history of photography. These “bodies,” oppressed by the Soviet cultural policies and/or societal norms, have remained invisible long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Decolonizing the politics of representation requires revision of patriarchal art canons through the illumination of women photographer’s archives; acknowledgement of the cultural diversity of the USSR by studying non-Russian regions such as the Baltics; and adding nuance to Western art photography discourses by attending to regional specificities of post-Soviet photography. Through close readings of artists’ works and examination of the circulation of their archives, the panelists analyze the gendered condition of photography and the politics of discovering and inscribing photography from the late Soviet Union into broader art-historical narratives.”
Discussion following the presentations. Photo: Josie Johnson.
Find out more about this panel!
Read more on the Art Days Forever website - https://www.artdays.net/news/aseees2023 - including more photos from the presentations, full abstracts of all three papers, and more!
Book review: Katrīna Teivāne. "Roberts Johansons. Zeitgeist and Photography"
Alise Tifentale, “The Long Road Up Against the Stream” (Tālais ceļš augšup pret straumi). [Book review of: Katrīna Teivāne. Roberts Johansons. Zeitgeist and Photography (Roberts Johansons. Laikmets un fotogrāfija) Riga: Neputns, 2022.]
Book review published in: Art History and Theory (Mākslas vēsture un teorija) 27 (2023): 87-89.
Download the book review PDF here (Latvian only)!
I was thrilled to have the opportunity to review the latest book by my dear friend Katrīna Teivāne, titled Roberts Johansons. Zeitgeist and Photography (Roberts Johansons. Laikmets un fotogrāfija) (Riga: Neputns, 2022). It is an extremely well-researched and elegantly written monograph about one of the most important photographers in Latvia, Roberts Johansons (1877-1959).
The book is available at the publisher’s website, https://www.neputns.lv/products/laikmets-un-fotografija-roberts-johansons, as well as in the ISSP online store https://shop.issp.lv/products/roberts-johansons-age-and-photography
The review was commissioned by the main art history journal in Latvia, Mākslas Vēsture un Teorija, and is published in its vol. 27 (2023).
Find out more about the journal Mākslas Vēsture un Teorija, vol. 27 (2023).
Photos from the book opening at the National Library of Latvia in Riga, May 2022.
Katrīna Teivāne (on the right) and myself at the opening of the book in May 2022.
The following two images are from the Facebook album of the book publisher Neputns (more photos here).
The author of the book, Katrīna Teivāne (left) and myself (right).
I had the honor to congratulate Katrīna and say a few words about the book as well as some of the difficulties that pose a challenge to photo historians.
New essay: “Women with Cameras: Providing Erotic Entertainment for the Male Audience While Working as Photographers"
Alise Tifentale, “Women with Cameras: Providing Erotic Entertainment for the Male Audience While Working as Photographers,” in The Queue. An Episode in Tartu’s Photo History, edited by Indrek Grigor and Alexey Murashko. Tartu: Tartu Art Museum, 2023: 82-93.
Download the article PDF here!
The article was commissioned in 2022 by the curator Indrek Grigor on the occasion of the exhibition he organized titled The Queue. An Episode in Tartu’s Photo History (November 5, 2022—February 12, 2023) at the Tartu Art Museum.
Abstract:
“The exhibition is aimed to serve as an impulse for further development of photographic art in our republic, especially among women. (. . .) Women already have proven that they are, and can be, capable photographers, and this exhibition undoubtedly proves that one more time,” wrote Jānis Kreicbergs (1939–2011), a Latvian photographer and member of the Riga Photo Club, in the catalogue of the international photography exhibition Woman with Camera [Fotografē sieviete], which he organized in Riga in 1977. The condescending tone (“women have proven”: to Whom? Why? How?) characterizes the heteropatriarchal field of photography in Soviet Latvia and across much of the transnational photo-club culture at the time. This essay focusses on the exhibition Woman with Camera, which also included works by Estonian women photographers. The aims of this essay are 1) to offer a tentative feminist critique of the Soviet postwar photo club culture, 2) to outline the historical origins of that culture, and 3) to highlight a few sociological and cultural advancements that this culture achieved despite its blatant sexism.
I have chosen the exhibition Woman with Camera as the case study in this essay for several reasons. Firstly, Woman with Camera was arguably the most widely publicized international photography exhibition of the decade in Latvia. Secondly, it presents a unique and complex set of issues: on the one hand, it reflects the dominant worldview of the photo-club culture and manifests the desires and fantasies of straight middle-aged men. On the other hand, it does so—paradoxically—through the work of women photographers. Highlighting such paradoxes helps us better understand what is really at stake: it may be less important to know whether a “man” or a “woman” holds the camera than it is to examine the societal and cultural context in which they operate, the kinds of images they produce and who benefits from their activities. Thus, I argue, the exhibition Woman with Camera did not so much demonstrate the creative output of women photographers as reveal what kinds of images by women photographers were deemed acceptable in the photo-club culture of the time.
Finally, I would like to clarify that my discussion of Woman with Camera in this essay is based mostly on secondary sources: publicity materials of the exhibition and selected works reproduced in the press. The lack of primary sources is among the obstacles that hinder further research. For example, today it is impossible to reconstruct the exhibition Woman with Camera in its entirety. I have not succeeded in finding any images of the installation at the Museum of History of the Latvian SSR. Photographing exhibitions for future reference was not a common practice in the 1970s, and even the show’s organizer, Jānis Kreicbergs, did not have any photo documentation of the actual installation. The exact works are unknown because the catalogue lists only the names of the participants and the countries they represented: 220 prints by 77 women photographers from 11 countries (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, the USA, the USSR, and West Germany).
New essay: “Completing an Unfinished Sentence: On the Collaboration between Sophie Thun and the Archive of Zenta Dzividzinska"
For this essay, I revisit the collaboration between the artist Sophie Thun and the archive of my mother, the artist and photographer Zenta Dzividzinska. The collaboration, initiated by the curator Zane Onckule, began in 2021 and later continues in Sophie’s other projects.
Read moreHot off the press: new research article "Proposal for a Photography Museum Without Images"
Absolutely and positively thrilled to see my research article "Working the Labor-Leisure Machine: Proposal for a Photography Museum Without Images" just published (February 2, 2023) in the Season 1 of the new creative collaboration platform Riga Technoculture Research Unit (RTRU) - www.rtru.org.
Read moreLandscape as a Form of Escape: An invited talk introducing the collection of Soviet apolitical art in a private museum in South Korea
“Landscape as a Form of Escape: Apolitical Art and Politics in the Soviet Union between c. 1945 and 1991” is a talk I delivered at the mM Art Center in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, on January 28, 2023. I was invited to give this talk on the occasion of an exhibition showcasing the mM Art Center’s unique and diverse collection of apolitical art from the Soviet Union.
Read moreNew article and new research direction: "Photography Without Images"
Just published in December 2022! New article and new direction in my research:
Alise Tifentale, “Photography Without Images: A Proposal to Think About the Medium as Practice, Apparatus, and Form of Social Interaction,” in Latvian Photography 2022, edited by Arnis Balčus and Alexey Murashko (Riga: Kultkom, 2022): 152-171.
Download my article as a PDF here!
Abstract:
In this article I propose to think about photography without images, i.e., focusing on the medium as practice, apparatus, and form of social interaction. Based on concepts created by Pierre Bourdieu, Vilém Flusser, and Lev Manovich, among others, this article attempts to depart from the image-centered, art-historical approach to photography that has dominated this field so far. Instead of repeating the romanticized narrative of “great” or “important” images and their “talented” makers, this article proposes to look beyond the images’ surface and examine unpublished or deleted photographs in archives and on social media, the significance of darkroom work and collective or shared authorship, photography on the NFT art marketplace, and the role of AI and automation in photographic production. The article discusses the work of photographers, artists, digital creators, and social media content producers such as Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali, Caroline Calloway, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Zenta Dzividzinska, Alan Govenar, Ivars Grāvlejs, Lucia Moholy, Emma Agnes Sheffer, Alnis Stakle, Sophie Thun, and others.
New peer-reviewed article: "Sophie Thun Interprets Zenta Dzividzinska’s Negatives"
Hot off the press! New peer-reviewed article:
Alise Tifentale, “Sophie Thun Interprets Zenta Dzividzinska’s Negatives: A Case Study of Exploring and Re-evaluation of a Private Photo Archive,” in Mapping Methods and Materials: Photographic Heritage in Cultural and Art-historical Research. Proceedings of the National Library of Latvia 9 (XXIX). (Riga: The National Library of Latvia, 2022): 254-274. Open access.
Download my article as a pdf here.
Download the full volume from the publisher’s website: https://dom.lndb.lv/data/obj/file/33771027.pdf
Abstract of my article “Sophie Thun Interprets Zenta Dzividzinska’s Negatives: A Case Study of Exploring and Re-evaluation of a Private Photo Archive”:
Based on a case study of the private archive and estate of Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011), a Latvian artist and photographer active locally and internationally in the 1960s, the article highlights some of the difficulties of preserving forms of cultural heritage that so far have eluded the attention of both the professional art world and official memory institutions. Curator Zane Onckule envisioned a new model of collaboration between the estate of a deceased artist, the practice of a contemporary artist, and the labor of an archivist. The unusual vision resulted in the solo show of Austrian contemporary artist Sophie Thun, “I Don’t Remember a Thing: Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ” at the Kim? Contemporary Art Center in Riga, Latvia (July 15 to September 12, 2021). Onckule invited Thun to exhibit her own work as well as to study Dzividzinska’s archive. During the exhibition, Thun discovered Dzividzinska’s negatives and printed new images from them onsite. Thun referred to her practice as interpreting Dzividzinska’s work. Archivist Līga Goldberga opened the boxes where the family had kept Dzividzinska’s archive, described their contents, and helped Thun with the selection of negatives. Departing from the concepts of kinship, collaboration, and affective labor, Onckule, Thun, and Goldberga engaged with Dzividzinska’s archive to create an evolving space for a caring conversation. By physically bringing her archive into the gallery, the exhibition attempted to reverse the history that too often had overlooked and forgotten women photographers’ work. By centering the project around darkroom work, usually the most invisible part of photographer’s labor, the exhibition challenged the cultural status of that labor and encouraged a broader re-evaluation of Dzividzinska’s oeuvre. After the exhibition, part of Dzividzinska’s archive found a permanent home at the Latvian National Library.
Learn more about Zenta Dzividzinska’s life and works here: www.artdays.net
Mapping Methods and Materials: Photographic Heritage in Cultural and Art-historical Research is a peer-reviewed volume that I co-edited with Katrīna Teivāne and which includes articles by Maria Garth, Leila Anne Harris, Elita Ansone, Baiba Tetere, Stella Hermanovska, Aigars Lielbārdis, Kate Švinka, Līga Goldberga, Mārtiņš Mintaurs, Liāna Ivete Beņķe, Šelda Puķīte, Ieva Melgalve and Andra Silapētere.
The volume grew out of an eponymously titled photography research symposium and summer school that Katrīna and I organized in August 2021 at the National Library of Latvia and Art Academy of Latvia—read more about it here.
