RE_MAKING. Domankiewicz, Gane, Lange, Brighouse, Munnik, Roelsma

This exhibition shares practices of re-making by six participants – Peter Domankiewicz, Jo Gane, Carolin Lange, Brittany Brighouse, Janou Munnik, Eelco Roelsma – who specialise in working with archival material. Re-making as a research method, as photography, and as digitisation. The participants re-photograph, re-film, re-tread, re-construct, re-perform and re-transform to make sense of the past. The individual works look at the odd and forgotten practices of photography and film, at side paths of colour photography, errors in science and in digitisation, and the transformation of archive material into the digital.

The projects by Peter Domankiewicz, Jo Gane and Carolin Lange are part of their PhD research in photographic history at De Montfort University, University of Warwick, and Birmingham City University.

Filmmaker Peter Domankiewicz reconsiders the work and inventions of William Friese-Greene (1855–1921) and his contribution to early cinema. He digitally animates archival images on glass that date from 1885 and sheds new light on early experiments towards the first moving pictures. ↑

Photographer Jo Gane re-treads the calotype photographs George Shaw (1817–1904) made in Packington Park near Birmingham in the 1840s and early 1850s. She revisits the locations where Shaw created his works and re-photographs and develops them with nineteenth century cameras and chemistry. ↑

Artist Carolin Lange re-performs early colour experiments by scientist John F. W. Herschel (1792–1871). Herschel explored how plants produce photographic colours, some of which were unstable. Carolin captures the volatile photographic reactions using digital imaging, printed on Herschel’s cyanotype that is coated with plant extracts. ↑

Brittany Brighouse, Janou Munnik and Eelco Roelsma are digitisation specialists. They are transforming archival material into a digital archive for the National Collection for Architecture and Urban Planning at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Once in a while, malfunctions occur in capturing, scanning and processing. These ‘happy accidents’ reflect the complex and often overlooked conditions when making photographic reproductions. The results illustrate the process of re-imagining material objects within the digital realm. ↑

Credits: DigiLab, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam / Brittany Brighouse, Janou Munnik and Eelco Roelsma. 

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