Materialities focuses on the importance of the photograph as a material object, a physical testament, a document of occurrence, and of a past happening. The characteristic of the photo as an object has existed since the birth of the medium itself. Joan Schwartz described the daguerreotype as a mirror with a memory; not merely just an image but also an object. We create more photos than ever while printing far less than what would have been proportional a decade ago. This, a crisis of modern times, is the loss of our physical relationship with photos and the cultural subtexts embedded in the practice of possessing physical photos. It is with these sentiments in mind that we revisit and reconceptualize our current relationships to the materialities of images.

Essays by Erik Kessels, Kyler Zeleny, Jon Wagner, Craig Campbell and Derek Sayer.