‘EXPERIENCES OF NON-EXISTENCE’: GHOSTLINESS IN THE LAST THIRD OF THE 20TH — THE BEGINNING OF 21ST CENTURIES PHOTOGRAPHY
Keywords:
Photography; ghostliness; disappearance of the subject; contemporary art, Francesca Woodman; Rebecca Cairns; Silvia Grav; Valerie Kabis; Tina Kazakhishvili; Alexey Titarenko; Artemiy Sokolov.Abstract
In the article, the researcher examined the issue of the image dematerialization as an acquisition of the ‘experience of non-existence’ by the subject in the last third of the 20th – the beginning of 21st centuries photography. The author considered works by Ralph E. Meatyard, Duane Michaels, Francesca Woodman, Rebecca Cairns, Silvia Grav, Valerie Kabis, Tina Kazakhishvili, Alexey Titarenko, Artemy Sokolov. The researcher concluded that ghostliness as a photographic effect, as a part of the artistic language of the medium shows that photography is a means of self-reflection and psychological and philosophical understanding of reality, and not just a method of its mechanical reproduction. It gives the possibility of having an individual and collective ‘experience of non-existence’, going beyond one’s own borders, merging with space, a kind of ‘death repetition’.
References
Artemiy Sokolov. Void of Memory (2020) [Online]. Available at: https://www.newartstudies.ru/izdatelstvo/fotoalbom-sokolovskii (accessed: 22 December 2025). (in Russian)
Bartes, R. (2011) Camera lucida. Moscow: Ad Marginem Publ. (in Russian)
Conley, K. (2013) Surrealist Ghostliness. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Ferris, A. (2003) ‘Disembodied Spirits: Spirit Photography and Rachel Whiteread's «Ghost»’, Art Journal, 62(3), p. 44–55.
Fineman, M. (2012) Faking it: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press.
Freud, S. (2006) Sobranie sochinenii v 10 t [Collected Works in 10 vols]. Vol. 3. Мoscow: ООО «Firma STD» Publ. (in Russian)
Goysdotter, M. (2013) Impure vision: American Staged Photography of the 1970s. Lund: Nordic Academic Press.
Hoaglund, S. ‘Fall Symposium Retraces Contours of History: «City of Shadows» Exhibition Exposes Surreal Scenes of St. Petersburg’s Past’ [Online], Alexey Titarenko’s official web site. Available at: http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/press (accessed: 10 May 2019).
Kabis, V. ‘Double life of V.’ [Online], VKabis’s Flicker. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/27236828@N03/4378896920/in/album72157627299820749/ (accessed: 10 May 2019).
Kabis, V. ‘Tired schizophrenia’ [Online], VKabis’s Flicker. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/27236828@N03/4429158069/in/album-72157627299820749/ (accessed: 10 May 2019).
Kabis, V. ‘Without words, without thoughts’ [Online], VKabis’s Flicker. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/27236828@N03/5730751983/in/album-72157627299820749/ (accessed: 10 May 2019). (in Russian)
Phelan, P. (2002) ‘Francesca Woodman’s Photography: Death and the Image One More Time’, Signs, 27 (4), p. 979–1004.
Shik, I. А. (2017) ‘«The Disappearing of Subject» in Francesca Woodman’s and Silvia Garv’s Art’, Rossiia i Iberoamerika v globaliziruiushchemsia mire: istoriia i sovremennost' [Russia and Ibero-America in a Globalizing World: History and Modernity]. St. Petersburg: Skifiia-print Publ., p. 660–668. (in Russian)
Shik, I. А. (2017) ‘Reception of Surrealism in Sivia Grav’s Art’, Ispaniia i Rossiia: istoricheskie sud'by i sovremennaia epokha [Spain and Russia: Historical Fates and the Modern Era]. Мoscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia Publ, p. 589–596. (in Russian)
Shik, I. А. (2019) ‘«Experiences of Non-Existence»: Ghostliness in the Last Third of the 20th — the Beginning of 21st Century Photography’, Materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii «Fotografiia kak iskusstvo. Sovremennye tendentsii izucheniia. Istoriia natsional'nykh shkol» [Materials of international conference «Photography as an art: Current Trends in Study and History of National Schools»]. Moscow: NII RAKH Publ., p. 99. (in Russian)
Tchmyreva, I. ‘Alexey Titarenko: The City of Moist Silver’ [Online], Alexey Titarenko’s official web site. Available at: http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/press (accessed: 10 May 2019).
V2.17 / Valerie Kabis & the Unquiet Void (2017) [Online], Od Review. Available at: https://theodreview.com/2017/10/01/v2-17-valerie-kabis-the-unquiet-void/ (accessed: 10 May 2019).
