As members of extended families and genealogical lines we collect and view photographs to remember. By situating the present investigation within the context of archival family photographic collections, this research seeks to understand the assumptions surrounding the interplay between the practice of viewing photographs and notions of remembering. Historically, photography has been connected to concepts of stability and truth with photographic images acting as a metaphor for ‘real lived experiences’. When a photograph is viewed, whatever was present before the camera is verified. In his seminal text Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980), French theorist Roland Barthes describes this as ‘a truth to presence’ (Barthes 1980: 84). Barthes links this position to Poststructuralist theory, by determining that photographic signifiers, denotative data, are stable where as the signified, the idea or meaning, is contingent on what a viewer brings to that particular ‘text’. Therefore the viewer relies on denotative data to process meaning. This research explores the ways photographers play with photographic processes to disrupt ideas of stability of meaning surrounding this medium. The visual component of this research explores the expectations that socio-cultural groups, specifically extended families, have when viewing photographs. The subsequent work will endeavour to lay bare the interplay between such expectations and the supposed reliability of the photograph in respect to both meaning and perception. Using an archive of my own extended family’s collection of photographs, this thesis seeks to disrupt the story-telling qualities of photographs. This interruption strategy points to poststructuralist discourses surrounding the stability of the photographic image and the context in which photography is grounded. The work will challenge viewers to re-assess what the photograph can or cannot do. The final work will be comprised of 80% practice and 20% exegesis.

As members of extended families and genealogical lines we collect and view photographs to remember. By situating the present investigation within the context of archival family photographic collections, this research seeks to understand the assumptions surrounding the interplay between the practice of viewing photographs and notions of remembering. Historically, photography has been connected to concepts of stability and truth with photographic images acting as a metaphor for ‘real lived experiences’. When a photograph is viewed, whatever was present before the camera is verified. In his seminal text Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980), French theorist Roland Barthes describes this as ‘a truth to presence’ (Barthes 1980: 84). Barthes links this position to Poststructuralist theory, by determining that photographic signifiers, denotative data, are stable where as the signified, the idea or meaning, is contingent on what a viewer brings to that particular ‘text’. Therefore the viewer relies on denotative data to process meaning. This research explores the ways photographers play with photographic processes to disrupt ideas of stability of meaning surrounding this medium. The visual component of this research explores the expectations that socio-cultural groups, specifically extended families, have when viewing photographs. The subsequent work will endeavour to lay bare the interplay between such expectations and the supposed reliability of the photograph in respect to both meaning and perception. Using an archive of my own extended family’s collection of photographs, this thesis seeks to disrupt the story-telling qualities of photographs. This interruption strategy points to poststructuralist discourses surrounding the stability of the photographic image and the context in which photography is grounded. The work will challenge viewers to re-assess what the photograph can or cannot do. The final work will be comprised of 80% practice and 20% exegesis.

Obwohl das dokumentarische Bild als beglaubigte Aufzeichnung einer außermedialen Realität als Diskursgegenstand bereits seit Längerem dekonstruiert ist, scheint die Faszination am Dokumentarischen nahezu ungebrochen. Die stete Bezugnahme auf das Dokumentarische in unterschiedlichen Diskursen der Fotografie zeugt davon. Auch zahlreiche künstlerische Auseinandersetzungen rekurrieren seit den 80er-Jahren verstärkt auf dokumentarische Konzepte und Formate. Ausgehend von diesem Paradoxon, der Dekonstruktion des Dokumentarischen in Theoriekontexten und dem Wiedererstarken dokumentarischer Formate in der Fotografie und Kunst, sucht die vorliegende Arbeit nach den Ursachen einer offenkundig anhaltenden Faszination am Dokumentarischen. Dabei richtet sie den Blick speziell auf künstlerische Fotografien, die Gebrauchsweisen der Fotografie aufgreifen, welche per se mit dem Dokumentarischen affiziert werden, wie die Pressefotografie, die kriminalistische Fotografie und die Amateurfotografie. Sie zeigt, über welche Strategien das Dokumentarische dort produktiv umgesetzt wird. Lässt sich jeder Dokumentarismus erst einmal als Versuch lesen, in der Repräsentation das Reale zu verbildlichen, beziehen sich die vorgestellten künstlerischen Arbeiten von Jeff Wall, Thomas Demand, Sophie Calle und Richard Billingham zwar auf ein Begehren nach dem Realen, machen aber gleichzeitig den Verlust des Realen in ihren Erzählungen von der Wirklichkeit erfahrbar. In ihrer Ambivalenz vermitteln die künstlerischen Arbeiten ein Konzept des Dokumentarischen als mobiles System, das dieses nicht als Kategorie, Genre oder Stil festschreibt, sondern als Handlung begreift, die das permanente Ineinandergreifen von Konstruktion und Dekonstruktion des Dokumentarischen nachvollzieht. Insofern erweisen sich die Kunst und das Dokumentarische als nicht polar, denn über ihre Beziehung zum Realen kristallisiert sich dieses als das gemeinsame Dritte der beiden heraus. / Although the documentary image as authenticated record of a reality beyond the media has, as the object of discourse, long been deconstructed, the fascination with the documentary would appear to be ongoing. The constant references to the documentary in a variety of photography discourses bears witness to this. In addition, countless artistic treatments since the Eighties have referred back to documentary concepts and formats. In the light of this paradox as well as the deconstruction of the documentary in theoretical contexts and the renewed gaining of strength of documentary formats in photography and art, this study investigates the reasons for the evident persistent fascination with the documentary. In the process, artistic photographs in particular are examined which reference conventions in photography that are associated per se with the documentary, such as for example press photography, criminalistic photography, and amateur photography. The strategies by which the documentary is productively implemented are demonstrated here. If every form of documentarism can be read first of all as an attempt to express the real visually in the representation, then the artistic works by Jeff Wall, Thomas Demand, Sophie Calle and Richard Billingham that are presented here may indeed reference a desire for the real, but at the same time they make it possible in their telling of reality to experience the loss of the real. It is through their ambivalence that the artistic works convey a concept of the documentary as a mobile system that does not codify it as a category, genre or style, but rather perceives it as an act that comprehends the documentary''s constant intertwining of construction and deconstruction. As such, it is shown that art and the documentary are not polar, because through their relationship to reality this relationship is shown to crystalize out as the common third party for both.