Rencontre avec Jonathan Dentler : Becoming “picture conscious”: wire photography and the culture of communication in the American century

Le CREA a le plaisir d’accueillir Jonathan Dentler, Chercheur Post-doctoral Terra Foundation en Études visuelles américaines, qui donnera une conférence sur ses recherches en histoire de la photographie et de la presse. La séance aura lieu en association avec le HAR (Histoire de l’Art et des Représentations), qui accueille Jonathan Dentler à Nanterre cette année, et le groupe Politiques Américaines.
La conférence est ouverte à tous, et sera suivie d’une discussion animée par Anne-Pascale Bruneau-Rumsey (CREA) et Judith Delfiner (HAR)

Jonathan Dentler is currently the Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow in Paris, where he is associated with the LARCA and HAR research groups at the Université de Paris and Université Paris Nanterre respectively. His thesis, which is entitled “Wired Images: Visual Telecommunications, News Agencies, and the Invention of the World Picture, 1917-1955,” is a global history of wire photography services.

Abstract :
Beginning in the 1920s, wire photography services decisively reshaped modern visual culture by using a technology similar to a fax machine to separate visual information from its material support and transmit it by telecommunications infrastructure. From Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight to distant wars and conflicts, Americans could see photographic representations of world events in their daily newspapers in a qualitatively different temporality, one that seemed almost “instantaneous”. Moreover, while infrastructure is frequently concealed by design, wire photos tended to visually register traces of their bumpy paths through circuits, electrical interference, and adverse weather patterns. Wire photography therefore served as visible proof of a burgeoning planetary infrastructure that increasingly connected Americans to the wider world. This talk will examine important developments in the U.S. wire photography system and its cultural implications, concluding with a consideration of wire photography in Edward Steichen’s photo gallery at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.