The Never Taken Images. Photographic Paper Archive (2022)

Book presentation on the works of Françoise and Daniel Cartier “Art & the Moving Image”
Eine Veranstaltungsreihe der Abteilung für Medientheorie
Univ.Prof. Dr. Gabriele Jutz

In 1998, when the Swiss artist duo F&D Cartier was awarded the prestigious Prix Jordi for the project A-Venir (To-come), the end of photography had just been proclaimed; post-photography and post-Internet art followed. It was precisely at this moment that F&D Cartier developed a concept that reduced the photographic process to its basic components – photosensitive paper and light itself. Untreated black-and-white photographic paper was to be installed as monochrome sheets in the exhibition space.
“In the conscious realization that the end of the era of silver gelatin papers was approaching, we decided to use it as a simple method with which to record time and inscribe light. Beyond this our aim is to ask questions about the potential of (unexposed or unused) photographic papers and the uncaptured or unfinished images that are implicit with them. We have brought these images to life, but rather than fixing them, we observe the process of their constant transformation.” Twenty-five years later, this methodology remains a constant for F&D Cartier’s work, as their latest publication, The Never Taken Images, exemplifies.

Françoise Cartier, visual artist, Daniel, photographer, live in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland.
Françoise and Daniel had established individual careers before merging their fields in the 1990s, exhibiting as a duo.