Visual series have recently been the subject of two studies that discuss the minimum number of images that can be considered a “series.” The question also seems relevant for the discussion of lists. The sequence in turn designates the way in which those parts are arranged. As a demarcation to series, serial works are characterized by a “numerical or otherwise systematically predetermined process (permutation, progression, rotation, reversal)” (Bochner 1967, 23). A painted medieval winged tartar can be considered a series, as can a comic strip or Upper Italian Renaissance frescoes that embellish representative villas. A series is an umbrella term that has many manifestations. A series refers to an artistic work which consists of parts that are independent but which together form a whole. Footnote 4 Both principles negotiate the connection between parts and the whole and are therefore important for any consideration of visual series (see Thürlemann 2013, 16). Footnote 3 He mainly emphasizes two principles that are at work when we deal with images in the plural: first, the principle of reciprocal sharpening and, second, the principle of distancing. The following considerations will take up the concept of plural images as hyperimages as described by Thürlemann ( 2013). In scholarly research little has been said about the visual list. To put it in a nutshell: at least to some degree, the photographic series must become a serial work. In order to achieve this, unifications are necessary that align the individual images with each other. The image must be reduced and semantically limited in order to become a distinct and isolated item with a countable element. However, the image has to undergo various operations to achieve this alignment. To speak of visual lists is possible through the adaptation of verbal sign systems on several transmedial levels. I argue that in order to become enumerative, the image must have a marked grasp on the word. However, if the list is generated from the anthropological need to name and order unknown things, there should be no visual lists, as the act of naming is (necessarily) precluded. Footnote 2 Yet, how are these opposing dynamics reconciled and transformed when the archive or list is reproduced in the form of a photobook? Both the book and the list satisfy a need for order, for a distinct selection. An archive or inventory of categories presents the user with a series of instances without a narrative thread the book form, however, suggests and inevitably creates a sense of progress from beginning to end. We can define an enumeration as a kind of inventory or catalogue, if they represent a characteristic (like names), we can speak of a register. The viewer is not “only” the recipient but active constructor of the work. One thesis is that the role of the viewer in the CDp is strengthened. I will ask whether photography, and in this particular case the Conceptual Documentary photobook, Footnote 1 is particularly suited to assign an enumerative, a “serial” function to the image and how that enumerative function is communicated to the viewer. I will ask whether visual enumeration is a viable possibility and, if so, how. This contribution aims to question the photographic series in terms of enumerative functions and modes of representation. Photography has thus far been conceptualized not as a list but as a series.
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