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MANIFEST 

TAKE A BETTER PICTURE

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Manifest published in October 2016 and updated in October 2019

presented in a solo exhibition in the contemporary art museum photoforum Pasquart, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland (2018)

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I believe, that for 150 years since its invention, the amateur camera has not been a neutral tool in my relationship with others. This tool has been invented by a male white engineer about the ideologies of hunting and the military industry. Indeed, my SRL camera is black, phallic, and in a way still shaped like a gun. I have to admit, I still feel unwell to point a camera with a long lens at someone even after all these years of training. There is tension between the inner eye and the camera. 

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I believe, that my relationship with the other, my environment is somehow technologically even disturbed by such a tool. The technical possibilities in terms of efficiency, design, and image production are the main appealing qualities for the user. I observe, however, none of its features encourages technically speaking co-creation between the operator and the other. The design of the camera does not help to build a relationship. In this sense, this tool presents a moral and ethical conflict – because it opposes power-sharing. I believe, it’s time to divest this image production tool of its status as a phallus, weapon, or image production machine and turn the act of creation into a shared space of negotiation, where everyone is on equal footing. Today’s tools have to be decolonized and new civil tools have to be invented, which overcome «taking» and «collecting».

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Dorothée Elisa Baumann

2016/2019