What Was Documentary Is Now Something Else

The crisis of the documentary, expressed during an age in which more images are being produced and circulated than ever before, possibly relates to the equally enduring crisis of valid political, social and economic agreements. This in turn causes the agreements about various forms of knowledge production to automatically begin to falter. When the nurturing of a binding character in relation to present-day events seems difficult in the best-case scenario, then perhaps a kind of “archaeology” of the present is more strongly assigned meaning. Documentary photographic practices can then no longer be considered to be—more or less reflexive—representational practices. Other questions related to their changing conditions of appearance and their affiliations with history, knowledge, memory, identities, places, and violence are becoming evident. Conceivably, something in the images must then rise to the fore, something that cannot quite yet be named today,something else…