Photography as protogeometry

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Tomáš Dvořák
FAMU in Prague

The article investigates relationships between measuring and imagemaking, focusing on the common historical context for the universalization of measurement standards and the emergence of photography. It discusses several artworks that directly tackle the problem of measurement and standardization (Marcel Duchamp’s 3 stoppages-étalon; John Baldessari’s Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts); and Sasha Litvintseva’s and Beny Wagner’s Constant) to demonstrate the tension between the particular and the universal, the material and the ideal, and to claim that both metrological standards and technical images always exist as multiple variants of idealized entities.

Keywords
photography, measurement, standardization, protogeometry

Article Details

How to Cite
Dvořák, Tomáš. “Photography as protogeometry”. Artnodes, no. 34, pp. 1-10, doi:10.7238/artnodes.v0i34.425717.
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(c) Tomáš Dvořák, 2024


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Author Biography

Tomáš Dvořák, FAMU in Prague

Tomáš Dvořák is an associate professor at the Department of Photography at the Film and TV School (FAMU) of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. His research focuses on the history and theory of arts, media and visual culture, with an emphasis on their scientific and technological contexts. He recently edited, with Jussi Parikka, Photography Off the Scale: Theories and Technologies of the Mass Image (Edinburgh University Press 2021) and a special issue of the journal Philosophy of Photography (2022, vol. 13, no. 1) on cameraless imaging.

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