Jules Spinatsch began working with automatic cameras fifteen years ago, making use of the equipment employed in the surveillance of public spaces. At the time he created a 180° panorama of the World Economic Forum in Davos consisting of 2,176 individual images. He continued the group of works entitled Semiautomatic Photography with, among other things, shots of a football stadium, the Vienna Opera Ball, a prison, and the SAP headquarters. The book Semiautomatic Photography now shows the complete cycle for the first time. In it, Spinatsch foregrounds a selection of individual pictures that otherwise form a tiny element in his panoramas. Rather like in William S. Boroughs’s cut-ups, this process of “cutting out” single photos gives rise to a subversive image strategy, reflecting on the function of the visual in a society of control. The book appears in conjunction with the exhibition “Jules Spinatsch, Semiautomatic Photography 2003 – 2020” at the Centre de la Photographie Genève, from 12 December 2018 to 2 February 2019.
Jules Spinatsch began working with automatic cameras fifteen years ago, making use of the equipment employed in the surveillance of public spaces. At the time he created a 180° panorama of the World Economic Forum in Davos consisting of 2,176 individual images. He continued the group of works entitled Semiautomatic Photography with, among other things, shots of a football stadium, the Vienna Opera Ball, a prison, and the SAP headquarters. The book Semiautomatic Photography now shows the complete cycle for the first time. In it, Spinatsch foregrounds a selection of individual pictures that otherwise form a tiny element in his panoramas. Rather like in William S. Boroughs’s cut-ups, this process of “cutting out” single photos gives rise to a subversive image strategy, reflecting on the function of the visual in a society of control. The book appears in conjunction with the exhibition “Jules Spinatsch, Semiautomatic Photography 2003 – 2020” at the Centre de la Photographie Genève, from 12 December 2018 to 2 February 2019.
