Photography seems to ‘belong’ anywhere we see it. On pages, on walls, on screens. This is what has made the medium so widespread, so artistically adaptable, but also so confusing. In her photographic projects and presentations, the artist Dayanita Singh has been exploring a subtle dialogue between publication and exhibition. At the heart of this dialogue is a rich engagement with montage and editing: the placing of images, or image fragments, in relation to each other. 'Book building', as she calls it, is related to exhibition building, where meaning emerges in the relation between photographs. In this illustrated talk, the writer and curator David Campany shows how Dayanita Singh’s work is an important step in the rich history of photographic montage in the hybrid space between the book and the museum.

Biographical note
David Campany is a writer and curator. He teaches at the University of Westminster London, and is Curator at Large for the International Center of Photography, New York. Recent curatorial projects include William Klein: Yes. Photographs, Paintings, Films 1948-2013 (2022), ACTUAL SIZE! Photography at Life Scale (2022); A Trillion Sunsets: A Century of Image Overload (2022); Gillian Laub: Family Matters (2021). In 2020, he curated the three-city Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie 2020, working with 70 artists from 13 countries. His books include Indeterminacy: Thoughts on Time, The Image and Race(ism), co-written with Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (2022), Victor Burgin’s Photopath (2022), On Photographs (2020), So Present, So Invisible – conversations on photography (2018), A Handful of Dust (2015), Walker Evans: the magazine work (Steidl 2014), Jeff Wall: Picture for Women (MIT Press/ After all 2010), Photography and Cinema (Reaktion 2008) and Art and Photography (Phaidon 2003)