Rephotography and the Ruin of the Event
Abstract
Rephotography is the practice of retracing the location depicted in an old photograph and taking a new image from the exact same perspective. The two photographs are then combined within the same photographic frame. Originally used in scientific surveys, rephotography is now a widely popular trend, featuring a variety of technologies. In this article I employ the idea of the ruin to conceptualise rephotography’s potential to expose the temporality of space and the spatiality of time. First, I relate Walter Benjamin’s theory of the ruin to his notion of photography and introduce the notion of the photograph as a ruin of the event that it captures. Subsequently, with reference to Mark Klett’s pioneering work I explore how rephotography spatialises this past event and transforms corresponding details of the physical environment into ruins. Finally, I examine rephotography’s performative and affective dimensions through two popular blogs, Dear Photograph and Link to the Past, that feature different techniques of layering images.
Keywords
allegory, nostalgia, photography, rephotography, ruin
Author Biography
László Munteán
László Munteán is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and American Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His research focuses on intersections of cultural memory, visual culture, and the built environment. Drawing on diverse theoretical apparatuses, his publications have focused on the memorialization of 9/11 in literature and the visual arts, American cities and architecture, as well as the memory of the Allied bombing of Budapest during the Second World War. In a broader sense, his scholarly work revolves around the juncture of literature, visual culture, and cultural memory in American and Eastern European contexts.