OEI #102-103: Photography on Edge

OEI #102-103: Photography on Edge, 432 pages. Ed. Cecilia Grönberg & Jonas (J) Magnusson, 2024 Photography on Edge – 25 visual dossiers compiled and introduced by Geoffrey Batchen + ”Wanting more” – on and from the work of Australian artist Justine Varga + translations of a selection of Geoffrey Batchen’s essays into Swedish ”The published history of photography has long been motivated by a number of key principles: innovation and originality, authorship and nationality, chronology and medium specificity, technical excellence and aesthetic achievement. The folios [inOEI #102–103] offer an alternative way to regard this history. They comprise a series of repetitious fragments drawn more or less arbitrarily from across various photographic practices and genres. In every case, these folios present a photography on edge: tense, nervous, unsure of itself—at least when compared to the self-certainty we encounter in most histories of this medium. A photography on edge is a photography that escapes the usual definitions. […] One thing is for sure: if they are to be included in future histories of photography, then we will need to set aside our prejudices and presumptions and learn to say what we see, and not just see what we already know how to say.” Geoffrey Batchen in OEI #102-103: Photography on Edge (OEI #102-103: Photography on Edge, 432 pages. Ed. Cecilia Grönberg & Jonas (J) Magnusson, 2024)