Thread Count

Taking the jubilee issue #10 of Der Greif as the starting point, a selection of 24 photographers shown in the issue was asked to invite a photographer of their choice to submit a photograph that ‘reacts’ to theirs. This started a chain of invited photographers whose work responded to the previous image shown, and so forth. This chain reaction prompts photographers to interact with one another and for the audience to be able to visualise this dynamic ‘network’ of image threads developing.

For CO-OP, Der Greif brought this thread of images into the physical space, making it fully accessible for the audience to interact with. The images were presented in a grid, produced as blocks of postcards in A5 size. Visitors were allowed to take one (or more) image with them. Thus, the project created a juxtaposition between the ‘virtual space’, a “market” where the image threads were produced and the physical space where the collection of images were displayed, but where images diminished according to how many were taken away by visitors. Each image was printed 25 times and remained visible until all 25 copies had been removed by the audience. A removed image created an empty space within the grid-hanging that still referred to the once physically present image. Once an image had been removed completely in the physical space, it was also marked as being removed on the website, thus the online space ‘reacted’ to the physical space and viewers online could see the audience’s reactions in the space. The images’ presentation clearly engages with the photograph as a reproducible medium and simultaneously questions the different “values” of a photographic image as well as its distribution – in the physical, as well as in the virtual space. The project wants to foster this discussion, especially during a photography fair.