WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The Window Research Institute partners with the Canadian Centre for Architecture to offer the CCA-WRI Research Fellowship. In this article, we introduce the research project of Emily Ducet, one of the 2024 fellows.

 

 

Project Overview

Mediating Light: The Architectures of Photographic Production foregrounds the architectures and infrastructures of the photographic materials giant Eastman Kodak’s global empire. Rooted in archival research in Kodak fonds in Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia, this project considers the design of photographic factories. Structured around a set of architectural and infrastructural typologies, this project puts into relief the constellation of materials, chemicals, people, communication systems, transportation infrastructures, legal structures, and trade policies that made Kodak’s commercial success—and the widespread use of its products by individuals around the world—possible. 

When photography has been considered in relation to architecture, it is usually in terms of how photographers have documented architecture—specifically, photographs of buildings and the built environment. And yet, photography’s architectures are manifest: photographic material companies have built factories to produce light sensitive film and paper, facilities to refine chemicals used in photographic processing, facilities to process film and print photographs taken by professional and amateur photographers alike, and grand office buildings underwritten by massive corporate profits. 

Reading a history of photography—and indeed, a history of photographic capitalism—through building plans, landscape architecture, and building permits, among other primary sources, this project builds on important recent scholarship on the environmental impact of media industries to examine the geopolitics of the history of the photographic industry.

Excerpted from the video recording of the Energy Always: 2024 CCA-WRI Research Symposium (August 7, 2024, Montreal)