The constructed image and its pivotal role in the history of photography

Ruth Rosengarten, an  art historian from Israel who recently gave a talk in Delhi on the subject of “staged and constructed images” is pleased with the changing nature of photographs. “I think digitisation has opened up a new and different world. There has emerged a place for diverse works and I am very excited by the possibilities of digitisation,” she says.

The whole digital movement in the visual arts, Rosengarten says, has changed the process of creating art, as well as that of perceiving it.

“When photography arrived in the 19^th century,” she says, “many painters claimed that from now on painting is dead as photography could do realism better than painting. But painting continues. The world is big enough and the co-existence of digital, video, still images has brought a lot of fresh perspective.”

Her talk was held at Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, and it focused on points of contact between “staged and constructed photographs” with contemporary examples. Whereas staged photography deals with the setting up of a scenario before clicking the image, constructed photography involves creation of a “revised” image which might include the use of multiple images and might not require the use of camera at all.

It was through exploring the work of Sundaram and the photographer Dayanita Singh that Ruth first made inroads into the field of contemporary Indian art. “I’d written on Dayanita Singh when she had an exhibition in Hayward Gallery in London in 2013 and sent the article to her which she liked. With Vivan, I curated an exhibition in Lisbon about the document and archive featuring his photomontages. He has now commissioned me to write small book on his photographic work. Naturally drawn towards art and being a research associate at University of Johannesburg, I tend to take a deep interest in the contemporary art scene of the countries I have stayed in.”

Rosengarten was born in Israel and has resided in various countries including England, Portugal and South Africa. Though these places have affected her art practice, none of these could actually hold her back. “Various things of a particular place affect you. I can say that I have a sense of belonging of to all the places I have lived in. At the same time I am flexible to be able to live in any place. I loved living in London for many years but I am not English, I lived in Portugal for 20 years but I am not Portuguese, I was born in Israel but I  lived there only as a child. So it is malleable.”

Elaborating on this cosmopolitan theme some more, she adds, “I think that as technology has evolved we are connected to people all the time. At the moment the people I work with are not close to me physically. I have friends in London but I live in the countryside. In the same way I have an informal relation with the University of Johannesburg where I am working as a research associate. There is no teaching involved and I only visit if I have a talk there.”

An exhibition of Rosengarten’s photographs is currenlty on at her university in Johannesburg. The show is entitled Dear Fusia and comprises photographs she found at her family home just after her mother’s death. She has shifted the text present on the back of the original photographs to their front, by superimposing it.

“At present, I am working with mortuary photography — images of the dead, dying, aged, sick because I had my own experience of loss. I am interested in this autobiographical sort of work. I have written a couple of articles concerning terminal illness and working with the photographic curatorial project on a section of this big area. My other big interest lies in evocative objects…the traces people leave behind. I was close to my parents and husband so things used by them like hairbrush, toothbrush and other belongings became meaningful. I became interested in other artists who photograph images that are significant to them,” she says.

Rosengarten holds a doctorate from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London and thinks a formal education offers necessary tools for an artist to expand his practice. “Though I don’t think it is necessary but a course in art is useful as art has become increasingly enmeshed in a sort of articulate discourse. I think one gains a lot of tools from a degree in a university because in addition to the education it also provides ample opportunities for networking.”