Page Not Found

  • 08/03/2024 • 08/05/2024

    Double Exposure(s) - (Stutters)

    Solo exhibition by Dominique Hurth

    Startlocation!

    In 2014, Hurth encountered four boxes of cyanotype prints by Thomas W. Smillie, the first custodian and curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection of photography (active 1868 to 1917). In her artist book Stutters (published by Printed Matter, New York, 2021), Hurth builds on several years’ research to rework the original cyanotypes into visual montage, sequencing images that provide a record of Museum life as it documents a ‘national’ collection in the making. The artist’s book presents photographs of empty display cabinets and staged objects within the Smithsonian’s holdings, following divergent threads of photographic history, exhibition-ship and collection-making, as well as developments in various technological apparatuses across the late 19th and early 20th century. Through a meticulous process of xerox and printing reproduction, Hurth enlarges the world of each image and traces a photographic lineage, a process itself indebted to the cyanotype. Two overlapping sets of captions from the artist offer a subjective and scientific view of the photographs, inviting a cross-referencing of the “official”, if incomplete, bibliographic record with one that moves more freely across a historical timeline as a way to reflect on gaps in the archive. For her solo exhibition at Page Not Found entitled “Double Exposure(s) – (Stutters)” Dominique developed a new installation that expands from her research and the material that created Stutters. The artist focuses on infrastructures: the ones of reproduction and the ones of display. The title refers to the photographic process of superimposition of two or more exposures on one image, and serves as a metaphor: one looks at the history of the institution through the subjects of the photographs, and at the same time at the institution historicising its own history through the infrastructure of the archives.

About Page Not Found

Page Not Found is a non-profit space, whose aim is to promote publishing as artistic practice, and to make artists’ publications and related writings accessible to a wider audience.


Boekhorststraat 102-104
2512CT Den Haag

Directions

urlfacebooktwitter