How public imagery matters for art and crisis

Abstract

In this piece we discuss how use of images in news about crises affects the need for, the possibilities for, and opportunities for contemporary art and crises. In doing so we discuss ontologies of photographic art, images in context, representation, and violence. We argue that the increasing volume of news images around us affects how pictures are perceived, and accordingly the space in which art is experienced. We use examples from the artist author’s exhibitions and publications to develop these experienced relations into fractured images, and how the artwork can be seen both as expressions of experience and of self. The article concludes that art embeds both the representation, the artist’s and the viewer’s life worlds, and that art concerning crisis shows how the risk of simulation and the potential for understanding are two sides of the same coin.