MICHELLE HENNING

“THE PHOTOGRAPHIC FIX”

In this lecture Michelle Henning uses the multiple meanings of the English word “fix” to think about the legacy of chemical photography. Using a diverse range of photographs, she looks at how the idea of fixing has been understood in photography practice and theory. She argues that photographic fixer gave photography its mobility, preserving images and allowing them to be let loose on the world, but it also became the vehicle for silver contamination. In English to fix also means to arrange, so the lecture will touch on the question of how photographs arrange the world. Additionally, a fix is a dilemma or a sticky situation, and the lecture will address the difficulties of understanding photography as something that both freezes an image and sets it loose.