Estelle Blaschke / Armin Linke: Image Capital

The artistic research project "Image Capital" by the artist Armin Linke and the photography historian Estelle Blaschke develops around the notion of photography as currency that has marked its history from the metaphor of photographs as bank notes to the photographic treasure troves of the past. Seeking a plurality of voices, the workshop will address questions such as: how are value systems created in different types of photographic archives? How can value be conceived, measured and discussed? What technologies and infrastructures are needed to manage and exploit (or compete with) the ever-increasing amounts of images in the digital eco-system?

Estelle Blaschke (M.A., Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Ph.D., EHESS/Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Université de Lausanne and a visiting lecturer at the Université de Genève. From 2009 to 2011 and in 2014 she was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She is the author of the book Banking on Images: The Bettmann Archive and Corbis (Spector Books, 2016) and a member of the editorial board of the scientific journal Transbordeur. Photographie, Histoire, Société. Her current research concerns the history of microfilm and concepts of photography as information technology.

Armin Linke is a photographer and filmmaker and lives in Berlin and Milan. He was research affiliate at MIT Visual Arts Program Cambridge, guest professor at the IUAV Arts and Design University in Venice and professor for photography at the University for Arts and Design Karlsruhe. Linke combines a range of contemporary image-processing technologies in order to blur the borders between fiction and reality. His artistic practice is concerned with different possibilities of dealing with photographic archives and their respective manifestations, as well as with the interrelations and transformative powers between urban, architectural or spatial functions and the human beings interacting with these environments.