Dr Jelena Stojković

Despite the censorship of dissident material during the decade between the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, a number of photographers across Japan produced a versatile body of Surrealist work. In a pioneering study of their practice, Jelena Stojkovic draws on primary sources and extensive archival research and maps out art historical and critical contexts relevant to the apprehension of this rich photographic output, most of which is previously unseen outside of its country of origin. The volume is an essential resource in the fields of Surrealism and Japanese history of art, for researchers and students of historical avant-gardes and photography, as well as forreaders interested in visual culture.

How has the process of globalization shaped artistic practices on the one hand, and art history and theory on the other? The contributions in this volume approach this question from a range of perspectives, taking into account the role of travel, for example, or practitioners’ increasing knowledge of other cultures, art’s increasing awareness of itself as existing on a global level, literary translation, the advance of technology, and the ever-changing grand narratives of art history. As well as reflections on European avant-gardes and neo-avant-gardes, the collection features discussions of Japan, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. As a whole, the volume engages with broader current discourses about cultural globalization, and features input from leading scholars around the world as well as some important novel interventions by early-career researchers. The authors not only make a major contribution to the evolution of avant-garde studies, but also offer valuable, original points of view to art history and to the cultural theory of globalization more broadly.

Photography’s role in the historical framing of how we see can hardly be overestimated: heralded as the most extraordinary invention in vision, it was meant to deliver the promise of technology’s ability to enrich and improve human sight. Simultaneously, the medium’s capacity to offer photographic evidence placed it at the crossroads of the techniques of representation and regulation. Even as the machine is ever so rapidly substituting the eye in the forging of endless stream of visual data that we are now subjected to, digital vision still relies on the photographic image. Against such a background, this article departs from a proposition that if we were to envision different ways of seeing we can start from a reformulated understanding of photography. In order to do so, the article critically examines recent photographic works by Taisuke Koyama and Nihal Yesil and argues that abstract photography in particular enables the recognition of material entanglements between the medium and what it aspires to represent. ‘Following’ such materials as cellophane, aluminium, PVC as well as light, the article also mobilises Karen Barad’s project of agential realism in its view of abstract photography as a tool for looking with, a vehicle that enables the rethinking of the medium and, by implication, the ethical parameters of vision that hinges on it.

The standardisation of the shooting process was complemented by the manipulation of the final shots; cropping and montage enabling a balanced flow of photographs viewed as a continuous cityscape in the specific accordion shaped format. Trimming was mainly applied to the top of the photographs, as they only show a few floors of taller buildings, leaving the remaining parts of single images to the viewer's imagination. The two independently conceived projects also make the same use of in-between space', suggested by the margin 'paved' in the middle of the printed street. Gursky's photobook also makes use of this methodology: offering simultaneous views of the entire shot and its detailed renditions, while making clear the connection between them. Posters, brochures or fliers announce the event in advance, whereas photographs come in its aftermath. By surviving the event, this printed matter becomes its ephemera. It expects its past and retrospects its future.