The Narratives of <i>Topos</i>: Eva Leitolf’s <i>Deutsche Bilder – eine Spurensuche (1992–2008)</i> and <i>Postcards from Europe </i> (since 2006)
Abstract
Around the turn of the century, the notion of topos (τόπος) underwent an interesting and necessary transformation. Presumably due to the popularization of digital technology, scholars started to progressively uncover the complex nature of the word by expanding on its general meaning as it pertains to the sphere of speech. This phenomenon granted to narratives some spatial characteristics, and at the same time brought into the light an old and critical relationship between text and image. In the form of a conversation, this essay deals with this critical relationship between text and image, and the way this conflictual relationship shapes social imaginaries, propaganda, and automatisms when representing social events. The essay will address these questions through an analysis of a series of pictures that had a great impact on Latin America’s social imaginary.
Keywords
Propaganda; Latin America; photography; collective imaginaries
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Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Italy
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0902-7790
German A. Duarte is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. His research interests include history of media, film history, cybernetics, cognitive-cultural economy, and philosophy. He is the author of several publications, including four books, edited volumes, essays, and papers in international journals. Among them, he recently authored the monographs Reificación Mediática (UTADEO – 2nd Edition 2020), Fractal Narrative: About the Relationship Between Geometries and Technology and Its Impact on Narrative Spaces (transcript, 2014), and co-edited the volumes Transmédialité, Bande dessinée & Adaptation (PUBP 2019), We Need to Talk About Heidegger: Essays Situating Martin Heidegger in Contemporary Media Studies (Peter Lang, 2018), and Reading Black Mirror: Insights into Technology and the Post-Media Condition (transcript, 2021).
Free University of Bozen Bolzano Italy
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5943-6170
Critical examination of the practices of image production and contextualisation is a central thread running through all of Eva Leitolf´s work, which explores contested societal phenomena such as colonialism, racism, and migration. She studied communication design with a focus on photography at University GH Essen. She earned her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts and taught at international art schools and universities before becoming full professor at Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in 2019.
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