The aim of the present project has been to produce a monograph, which critically examines the migrations and transformations of images as they travel between different image communities. Via four case studies, the book investigates the processes of distribution, abundance, adaption and succession and the relations and exchanges between visual art and vernacular visual culture from the 1870s to the present day. At the core lies an interest in the mechanisms of such processes and their implications for the understanding of the notion of art and art historical narratives.  

Two key arguments are developed in the book, reflected by its title Travelling Images. First, the notion of travel and focus on movements and transformations signal an emphasis on the similarities between cultural artefacts and living beings. The book considers ‘the social biography’ and ‘ecology’ of images, but also, on a more profound level, the biography and ecology of the notion of art. In doing so, it merges perspectives from art history and visual culture studies with media studies. Consequently, it combines a focus on the individual case, typical for art history and material culture studies with a focus on processes and systems, on continuities and ruptures, and alternate histories inspired by media archaeology and cultural historical media studies.

Second, a particular understanding of the concept of ‘image’ is vital to this book. Images are here understood as visual conventions or patterns and contents, irrespective of their material appearance and whether they are ‘originals’, ‘copies’ or ‘reproductions’. Accordingly, a tripartite model is used consisting of picture, image and medium. A picture thus consists of an image, the content and a medium, its technical and material aspects. The main advantage of such a focus is that it encourages a simultaneous consideration of content and materiality. Thus the book combines attentiveness to materiality with an interest in images as visual conventions, patterns and contents.

Two significant changes have been made during the course of the project. First the title and focus of the monograph was initially on borders and boundaries. However I have redirected the focus to avoid the binarism between visual art and vernacular visual culture which these terms imply. Thus the focus lies on the movement of images rather than on borders and boundaries. Second, one of the chapters has slightly changed in scope. It still considers fashion photography. However the questions, empirical sources and period covered are different. I had some doubts about the possibilities of developing the initial paper on fashion photography into a chapter. This was further confirmed when an edited version of the paper was not accepted for publication by the international peer-review journal Fashion Theory in early 2016. The remaining case studies have been finalized as outlined in the initial research plan.

The book Travelling Images provides an important contribution to the field of visual studies in its combination of updated theory with close studies of extensive visual material. As such it corresponds to a lacuna within visual studies in its extensive use of a diversity of images as prime sources. The analyses are based on a large body of images, and of specific examples, and are thereby able to reveal phenomenon where little or no written sources are available. In short, this book maps visual statements, when textual statements are scarce. By studying such ‘visual discourses’, as it were, the present book display the possibilities with, rationale for, and strengths of image studies.

Second the book displays the benefits of combining concepts, methods and sources from media history and art history as it uncover the entangled history of mass media and art in modernity. The four case-studies included mark key events and processes in media history and art history and uncover their relations. Taken together the period covered coincides with the emergence and demise of modernism and modern mass media, which encompass the development of new media techniques and media formats as well as new aesthetics and circumstances for the production and reception of art. At present, ‘media’ or ‘media techniques’ are integral elements in definitions and discussions on contemporary art. Labels like ‘new media art’, ‘internet art’ or ‘digital art’ testify to this. In relation to this Travelling Images provides a historical background to today’s art ‘lingo’ by exemplifying how the fields of mass media and art have always been intertwined since the emergence of modern mass media in the mid-nineteenth century.

Thirdly the cases studied uncover a number of paradoxes and new findings in regard to events and agents in the history of art. For one they display the semi-permable boundaries between art and the vernacular. I consequence I have deliberately used the term borderlands to defy the idea that there is a definite demarcation or border between what is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the art world. The examples discussed in the book clearly attest to the fact that the art world is not a set territory but a conceptual space. The notion of the borderlands, then not a finite line but an expanded area, is a way to emphasize this. Second the case studies uncover that popular visual culture has in some cases been accomodating new visual practices and aesthetics before the field of art. Thus it upturns the traditional notion of the avant-garde artists as being avant per default. As this study display it has at times been easier to experiment and break norms outside the artworld, which lacks gatekeepers such as critics, curators and artists.  

A number of relevant lines of inquiry have been opened up by the present project. For one it questions where studies of visual culture stands today in relation to the discipline of Art History and the German tradition of Bildwissenschaft. Moreover my focus on print culture, particularly the printed magazine, display the vital relation between the art field and the field of massmedia historically. This opens up for new studies of the medialization of art, which also bear significance for the contemporary conditions when art, artists and art institutions act online.

During the sabbatical I have been a visiting scholar at the Research Centre for the History and Theory of Photography at Birkbeck University, London. The centre, which is lead by Dr. Patrizia di Bello, regularly organizes seminars with invited speakers which features current research and exhibition projects. I have likewise been a visiting scholar at the department of new media and communication at Goldsmith University where my contact has been professor Joanna Zylinska. At both universities I have presented my research at seminars and attended a number of other seminars and lectures. Di Bello and Zylinska have also introduced me to a number of other scholars in London.

The time in London has also proved valuable in relation to finding source material. I have had extensive use of the collections of Victoria and Alberts museum, the National Art Library and British Library. The access to these sources have significantly improved the quality and thereby also the significance of the project in the international research field.

During my stays in London I have also organized a number of meetings with scholars from other universities and institutions (South Bank University, University of Southhampton, University of Westminster, Oxford University, Kings College, University College of London, AAH, Victoria and Alberts museum) with the further aim of initiating new collaborations and projects. An immediate results of these meetings is the one day seminar on Scandinavian Fashion Photography which I organized in collaboration with Eugénie Shinkle, reader in Photography at University of Westminster. The seminar was held in December 2016 in London. https://www.westminster.ac.uk/events-and-exhibitions/scandinavian-fashion-photography-study-day At present Shinkle and I are preparing a book proposal for an edited volume to Bloomsbury.

The project and related topics have been presented at ten conferences and seminars during 2015 and 2016. Some of these events have been open to the public (Birkbeck University, Goldsmith University, Alto University, University of Westminster) while others have been limited to an academic audience (Lund university, Stockholm University, Södertörn college, Alto University, NTNU/Trondheim). As a result of my stays in London I have also been invited by Sunil Manghani, which is among the most important contributors on visual studies at present, to give a guest lecture at the Winchester School of Arts/University of Southampton in May 2017. I have also been invited to speak in the lecture-series “Challenging the Iconic Turn. Neue Perspektiven auf das Bild”, by professor Christoph Wagner at the University of Regensburg in December 2017.

The single most important publication within the project is the monograph Travelling Images which will be published by Manchester University Press within their series Rethinking Art’s Histories 2017-2018. During the sabbatical I have also published a number of articles. A first draft of one of the chapters in the above book was published in Journal of Art History in 2015 (85:2). Morover I have written two articles which delve into the relations between art history and media history, but which consider other themes and topics than those of the monograph. One which argues for a reframing of the understanding of photography as always mediated and entangled in media systems, was written already in 2014 but revised during the sabbatical and published in Culture Unbound 2016 (8:1). Moreover I have made a contribution to the edited volume The Power of the In-Between: Intermediality as a Tool for Aesthetic Analysis and Critical Reflection to be published in 2017 by Stockholm University Press. My contribution concerns the lithograhic reproductions of art in the 1870s and discusses how these convey contrasting understandings of different artistic mediums and their ability to advance certain contents. All publications which are the result of this project have been published by internationally renowned, peer-reviewed academic publishers and journals.