War Museums and Photography

The use of photographs in museums can reveal how the perceived transparency of photography and the authority of the museum interact with the subjectivity and the political construction of historical narratives. This paper focuses on the medium of photography in five war-related museums in Cyprus and examines how it is used in the context of these museums as a means to construct strong narratives by assuming the role of factual information and by appealing to emotions. More specifically, this paper explores (a) the types of photographs most common in war museums, (b) the context photography is presented in and how it influences meaning, and (c) the relationship between photography, memory and history. It is argued that photography in museums needs to be treated in a more critical and responsible way

Cyprus: Island of Aphrodite II/ George Lanitis. IAPT Press: Nicosia, Cyprus.

Cyprus: Island of Aphrodite II, published in 2020, is Stylianou-Lambert’s and Lambouris’ attempt to renegotiate their own visual past and a tribute to the creative process of photographic selection, exclusion and erasure. In what becomes an extended photographic act, the 1965 book is meticulously reproduced, only this time, ‘new’ photographs –photographs from Lanitis’ archive– are introduced and partially overlaid on top of the original pages; all the while, remaining aware of the fact that the mere act of overlaying material necessitates a much more violent act, that of erasure. As sociologist Andreas Panayiotou mentions in the introduction of Cyprus: Island of Aphrodite II: ‘The imposition of one picture on the other may shock the eye, and feel like a violation. The eye cannot see the older image in its totality. It can imagine it. But the artistic intervention is not only a negation. It is also a continuation. This is a book in which artists of the 21st century create a new paradox by adding archival photos, as if in a collage, to older, classical by now, “sacred” images.

Tourists Who Shoot

Tourists who Shoot looks at how tourists use their cameras while on holiday. Tourist choreographies have evolved, and are still evolving, alongside changes in camera availability and technology. This photographic series explores tourist landscapes from New York to Cairo as performance spaces where the use of the camera has forced specific choreographies and behaviors upon tourists. It includes photographs and video installations. [2009-2013] Solo Exhibitions: 2013 “Tourists Who Shoot”, Architecture School, University of Rome 3, Rome, Italy 2013 “Tourists Who Shoot”, Argo Gallery, Nicosia, Cyprus 2010 “Tourists who Shoot”, the (art)Space, Prague, Czech Republi

Tourists with Cameras: Reproducing or Producing?

This paper examines tourists' photographic representations and processes in order to engage with the multidisciplinary literature that views tourists with cameras as either passive consumers of places or, alternatively, as active cultural producers. Specifically, this research examines tourists' photographic performances at the Rock of Aphrodite, the legendary birthplace of the Greek goddess in Cyprus, as well as whether or not tourists perpetuate, with their own photographs, images found on postcards. It is argued that even though tourists are active participants in the photographic process and produce photographs that have highly personal meanings, their photographs are still shaped by larger conventions such as the cultural construction of places, structural factors, sets of social and visual conventions as well as photographic etiquett

The Photograph as visual embodiment of experience

Most research concerning vernacular photography focuses on representation (what photographs show), meaning (what photographs mean) and distribution (where and how photographs circulate). The proposed presentation focuses on a fourth, almost invisible, aspect of vernacular photography that is largely understudied: that of the photographic process—the act of taking a photograph and its relationship to experience. To investigate the relationship between photography, reproduction and experience, I conducted a research project that examined how visitors use their photographic cameras, smart phones and tablets in an art museum. The research project in discussion was executed in 2014 as part of a Smithsonian Institute Fellowship in Museum Practice. The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (in collaboration with the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access) was used as a research site. Observation, in-depth interviews with visitors and photo-elicitation were used to examine the relationship between art experience and photography. Emphasis was placed not only on the reported potential uses of museum photography, but also on the participants’ movements, interactions, feelings and thoughts during the photographic process. The data of the research suggest that the use of photography has an effect on the actual museum experience. Despite the fact that a few participants rejected the use of cameras in art museums as an additional, unnecessary and damaging lens to the museum experience, the majority of participants had positive attitudes regarding museum photography. Most visitors/ photographers admitted that photography could not possibly capture the “essence” of an artwork or an aesthetic experience, but talked instead of using photography for visually capturing an “embodied” experience with a museum object. They saw photography as a way to better engage with the museum environment and visually represent a personal, physical, sensory and mental connection with an artwork, museum object or person