Scratches, Holes, and Spots: Decay and Disappearance of Early Dance Photography

Abstract:The article is dedicated to archival documents of early dance photography that are marked by traces of use, threatened by decay, or deliberately destroyed. Taking the example of the photographic series of Olga Desmond's Sword Dance (phot. Otto Skowranek 1908), which is riddled with bullet holes, the aesthetic appearance and material conditions of the object will be examined in order to present different approaches to dealing with historical documents of dance photography. Following the idea of 'potential disturbances' that the art historian Peter Geimer identifies when he challenges the established history of photographic images in his essay Inadvertent Images: A History of Photographic Apparitions (Hamburg 2010), the injured surface of dance photography will be read as evidence that our view is always informed by that which remains invisible, behind the picture, and outside of its margins: the traces of its own history, found in the disturbances of our gaze.