| Abstract [eng] |
This paper explores the construction of meaning and hybridity in contemporary photography, focusing on examples from the Baltics. Today photography practitioners from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia increasingly produce works that not only are intermedial and hybrid in nature, but also function as elaborate artistic ‘systems’, where meaning is to be found within a large field of cultural references. While traditionally meaning in photography was seen to emanate from the content of a photograph, today this process is multi-layered and intricate. Photography practitioners increasingly invest images with meanings that gesture to outside and beyond the frames. Meaning-making takes place within an ever-expanding and arbitrary cultural field, of which the viewer is expected to have some knowledge to ‘unpack’ meanings. This has much to do with the network turn. Today photography is fluid, adaptive and interconnected, with networked capabilities enabling new functionalities for photography and a further expansion into our daily lives, all of which reflects in artistic practices. A traditional two-dimensional photographic image plays just one part in artistic systems, where it is intermixed with sculpture, installation, video, performative elements, and written word. This hybrid nature of practice marks Baltic photographers as part of a global generation and allows their work to tackle complex contemporary issues. |
