On Photography with Florian Ebner, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Jeff Wall, and Pablo Larios

Why It Matters

Understanding photography’s material challenges reshapes curatorial practice, artist workflows, and market valuations, ensuring the medium’s longevity amid shrinking analog infrastructure.

Key Takeaways

• Artists are revisiting analog processes post‑pandemic for tactile engagement.
• Lab closures and paper costs threaten traditional photographic production.
• Conservators balance preserving material integrity with evolving reproducibility standards.
• Jeff Wall emphasizes photography’s struggle for long‑term durability.
• Institutional policies mandate keeping originals, complicating reprint decisions.

Summary

The panel at Paris Photo explored the "material future" of photography, questioning how analog practices, institutional stewardship, and emerging technologies will shape the medium. Host Pablo Larios framed the conversation around materiality rather than AI or digitisation, highlighting lab closures, rising paper costs, and legacy projects such as Cindy Sherman’s reprint guarantee as pressures on traditional production. Artists like Katuda Alexi‑Meskhishvili described a post‑pandemic return to dark‑room work, teaching analog printing to students and noting fashion photographers’ hybrid workflows. Jeff Wall reflected on photography’s historical quest for permanence, arguing that despite its status as a major art form, the medium still struggles to achieve the durability of painting or sculpture. Florian, as a conservator, emphasized the museum’s duty to protect aging prints while navigating legal obligations that prevent returning works to artists for re‑creation. Key moments included Thomas’s warning that new print production is “all but over,” the Düsseldorf lab’s shutdown, and the discussion of Walter Benjamin’s reproducibility thesis as a lens for contemporary practice. The speakers repeatedly stressed the tension between preserving original materiality and allowing controlled re‑prints when works deteriorate. The dialogue signals that institutions must develop flexible conservation strategies, artists will increasingly blend analog and digital methods, and the market will need to account for the scarcity and fragility of physical prints. The material concerns raised will influence acquisition policies, exhibition planning, and the valuation of photographic works for years to come.

Original Description

Last November, during Paris Photo, Artforum convened two conversations on the materiality of photography at the Grand Palais. In this conversation, artist Jeff Wall, artist Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, and curator Florian Ebner reflect on the photograph’s longevity amid concerns about fading prints, disappearing labs, and the question of reprinting. If photography is defined by reproducibility, what happens when the conditions of reproduction themselves begin to change?

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