Image Capital

IMAGE CAPITAL is about the history and present of photography as an information technology.

Photographs are edited, exchanged, stored and sold, and often simply thrown away and forgotten. All of these actions shape how we interact with them. While the history of digital image practices is in its early stages, today the incessant accumulation of photographs in search engines, social media, or in the memories of our smartphones stands out. The interdisciplinary research project IMAGE CAPITAL by photography historian Estelle Blaschke and artist Armin Linke shows photographs, video works, texts, archival images, found footage, and interviews with researchers, scientists, and engineers, and revolves around various infrastructures of the photographic. How are value systems created? How are the ever-growing quantities of images managed, used and monetized in digital and analog concepts?

After its premiere at the Museum Folkwang, IMAGE CAPITAL will be presented in different versions at Fondazione MAST/Bologna, the Centre Pompidou/Paris, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation/Frankfurt/Eschborn. intercom Verlag is publishing a digital open access publication that can be accessed at image-capital.com.

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