OF FAST AND SLOW PAGES: MOVEMENT IN THE PHOTOBOOK

Abstract

In this essay, movement is grasped as something that not only exists in front of or in the camera, but also consciously works with the properties of the photobook and the recipient. Phenomenologically prepared by thinkers from Husserl to Gombrich, current perceptual psychological concepts such as Predictive Coding Theory (PCT) support the assumption that expectations and experiences interact as top-down processes with the bottom-up experiences of image perception. I examine this interaction on four levels using two photobooks by Gerry Johansson and Lars Tunbjörk: the level of the image object, the level of the image vehicle, the level of the photographer and the level of the photobook. Based on a brief historical classification, movement is examined in its reception-aesthetic relevance on the basis of photographic features such as the flash in order to show that movement, more than almost any other aspect in photography, can organise space and time, variance and redundancy, as well as the visible and the invisible, and endow them with meaning.