The BA thesis It is Easier to Imagine the End of the World outlines the theoretical framework and practical implementation of the cyanotype series The Unknown Photographer, which (on the basis of photographs taken between 1941 and 1944 and transformed first into digital collages and then into cyanotypes and screen prints) explores and questions the current (capitalist) ideological apparatus, its seemingly non-ideological stance, seeming irreplaceability and its visual, symbolic manifestations (or their absence). Through the theory of capitalist realism, the series (cyanotypes The Unknown Photographer 1–4) – and with it the thesis – also explores the false memory phenomenon (fausse reconnaisance) and the concept of ironic distance (capitalism does not exist despite, but because of anti-capitalism). At the same time, it focuses on the question of the master's gaze, the theory of reception aesthetics and the concept of the emancipated spectator. The latter concept also heavily influences The Unknown Photographer series, whose questions about modern ideological apparatuses and their (visual) manifestations are finalized and completed only through the viewer and his (visual) horizon of expectations.
|