The Poetics of Space - A Lecture on Photography, Text, and the Absent
By: Danielle Willsen Date: Monday, 14 December ‘09 Time: 5:30 PM Location: D.I.T Mountjoy Square Room G6
Spaces forever hold within them the tales of their past. Capable of being captured and retold, with photography and text, these stories are kept alive and well by history, but dwell in the essences of space. The Poetics of Space is a photographic project Danielle Willsen began in Chicago, IL in February 2009.
Originally from New York, Danielle moved to Chicago in Fall 2008. Fascinated by the relationship between space, history, and humanity, she began to photograph the sites of tragic accidents in Chicago’s history.
This concept of photographing the absent, Is one of a long tradition. Often referred to as the “late” photograph, this visual return visit to a space is one which can trigger important questions to be asked. What is the importance of the late photograph? How can a landscape communicate narrative without visual evidence of the past?
When photographing the sites of events past, many times visual evidence of events and histories have been paved over, wiped clean, and rebuilt over time. In these cases text can be utilized as a key element of a project, used to communicate the context of a photograph to the public. Whether in an artist statement, inclusion of specific captions, titles, or other subsequent text based documents coupled with the photographs, the connection between the Artists photographic representation of the absent is secured with text.
Danielle Willsen’s Poetics of Space Lecture will be an examination and discussion of the late photograph, and it’s relationship to text and audience.
Using photographic examples from her own work, as well as the work of other photographers like, Paul Seawright, and Joel Sternfeld, Willsen will be discussing different approaches to photographing the absent. As well as different ways artists allow their work to communicate and memorialize space.
The event will be held on 14 December 2009 at 5:30 PM. It will be conducted in room G6 of the Dublin Institute of Technology Mount Joy campus building off Mount Joy Square on Dublin’s North Side. It will be a one night event.
