Un-Making Image Session #3: Aftermath Photography: Materiality, Memory, and Place

Date: May 2018
Location: TENT Rotterdam

The 3rd session of Un-Making Image takes place at TENT Rotterdam. In this event, photographer and theoretician Ali Shobeiri will give a sneak peek of his forthcoming book. He will speak about materiality, place, and memory in the context of aftermath photography, taking a seascape image by artist Gert Jan Kocken as a point of departure. As well, Gert Jan Kocken will be present for a discussion and to comment on the photograph that inspired Shobeiri’s observations.

Ali Shobeiri proposes that "the conversion of a physical place into a photographed place within the aftermath genre manifests how the 'agency of place' in the world is turned into the 'exigency of place' in the photograph.”

About Ali:
Ali Shobeiri holds an interdisciplinary theoretical PhD from the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University, titled: Place: Towards a Geophilosophy of Photography. Currently he works as a lecturer of cultural studies at Radboud University and a guest researcher of visual culture at Leiden University. In his present research, he aspires to propose the notion of “placial aesthetics” through the triangulation of fields of photography, geography and philosophy.

About Gert:
Gert Jan Kocken's work engages critically with episodes in world history through creating alternative readings. He graduated in 1997 from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2011-2012). Exhibitions of his work were on view at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, the Vleeshal (Middelburg), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Extra City (Antwerp), among others.


The Booklet

The Event




Mark