Für eine Ökologie der Bilder

Following in the footsteps of the Hungarian photographer Imre Kinszki, looking at his macro shots of insect wing loaders and supply lines in modern cities from the 1920s, as well as closely reading his writings on natural economics, Peter Szendy reflects on the relationship between ecology and image production. According to Szendy, the idea of a non-teleological natural economy along the lines of Erich Haeckel's concept of an ecology offers valuable motifs for rethinking the image, especially today - in an age of infinitely accelerated dissemination. If, according to Szendy's thesis, the image is essentially heterochronous, then the ecology of images would mean bringing to light the multiple time periods that are incessantly obscured by its excessive, capitalist-driven circulation. This regime, which Szendy calls economy, must be countered by a perception that contrasts and interweaves the slowness of natural-historical time periods with the lightning-like instantaneity of light, on the basis of which today's image production reproduces itself so uninhibitedly. Szendy's essay follows the subtle and challenging maxim of rethinking the image in the tension between its indescribable slowness and the speed that takes it beyond the visible.