Handpicked – on Excursions in the Visual Archive

This is a collaborative project with four initiators: Fröydi Laszlo, Christine Sjöberg, Hendrik Zeitler, and Lars Dyrendom. The project began as an exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Gothenburg in 2012, accompanied by a symposium, and developed into a publication in 2013. The book examines images of humans, animals, and nature in modern photography as well as in the visual archive. It shows that the past and the present are interconnected in multiple ways, and that it is possible to view photographic images as historical information from a wide range of perspectives. When these images are brought together and function as a prism, they can shed light on institutional practices, naturalized conventions, identity formations, and subjective, private, individual as well as collective narratives.