Art in Dialogue with Ricard Martínez, Arqueologia del Punt de vista

A stubborn landscape: Sewing glances with the thread of time

Rephotography is an obstinate task, consisting of revisiting a historical image and making a new photograph from the same vantage point where it was taken. It is based on a scientific technique, Repeat Photography, used since the last third of the 19th century, to document long-term geological and ecological changes. It involves a precise methodology and invokes the essential photographic fact of activating the shutter of a camera in a specific place and time. Since the1970s, Rephotography has not only been operated by scientists, but it also landed in the hands of photographers and visual artists. We have made an eloquent tool of it, by creating complex images which we project into the future. In this voyage these images are propelled by the gravitational energy provided by the dreams of our predecessors in the task of creating a significant gaze, from an endlessly evolving vantage point.

In this lecture Ricard Martínez will offer an overview of his own visual work, based on this Rephotography methodology, including photographs, rephotographs and photographic installations in the public space. Much of the content poured into his projects is based on the graphic record of the Spanish Civil War. This is a conflict that dramatically altered the history of his country and the fate of its citizens. In this regard, his Rephotography work reveals the extraordinary validity of that distant era in the current local landscape. He also creates visual works based on his family album. It is a constant task, almost perpetual, that arises from the review of domestic photographs. In this journey back to the intimate story, the deep connection of great collective events with small intimate experiences is uncovered.

Register in advance here.

This event is sponsored by Lehigh University's Department of Modern Languages & Literatures

Arqueologia del Punt de Vista develops theoretical and audiovisual projects, dealing with the analysis of the perception of the current environment, through the study and recovery of resources, documents and technologies of visual representation from the past.

Ricard Martínez (Barcelona, 1962) is a visual artist, photographer, historian, and founder of Arqueologia del Punt de Vista. His visual production is based mainly on Rephotography and is linked to the perception of the present through the analysis of documentary records from the past. His methodology involves creation and research in such results where glances, moments and spaces are connected, and projected to the future.
He performs photographic installations in public spaces, as well as several works of documentation and digitizing of documents for archival and exhibition purposes, for both public institutions and private entities. This wide production range reveals the link between the archive, the observer and the space where images happen.

He regularly publishes articles based on his research in various press media and in conferences related to History of Photography, Teaching and Archeology. This diversity of contexts provides the wide mainstreaming range of his work. In addition to this, he also carries out cultural routes and gives lectures, seminars and courses on his photographic specialization.For more information visit: https://www.arqueologiadelpuntdevista.org/

Art in Dialogue is a series of interdisciplinary conversations between members of the university and the wider community - reflecting the ways in which their work is dynamically engaged with other fields of inquiry.

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