Dead Images Exhibition and Programme

The Dead Images exhibition opened at Edinburgh College of Art in June 2018. Rather than presenting the project’s research as a set of conclusions, the exhibition was structured around the unresolved question that had accompanied the panorama from the beginning: under what conditions, if any, should such an image be shown?

Visitors first encountered several films made from interviews with 21 people who approached collections of human and ancestral remains from different positions and experiences. The films addressed the histories and scientific uses of such collections, questions of return and repatriation, and the ethics of photographing and displaying the dead. Only after encountering these perspectives did visitors reach the entrance to the panorama. There, they could decide whether or not to enter and see it.

The exhibition extended this questioning beyond the panorama itself. In the Darkroom, a three-channel video installation developed from a conversation between Adler and Wolfgang Reichmann, photographer at the Department of Anthropology of the Natural History Museum Vienna, examined the museum’s historical photographic collection and the position of the photographer within this history. It also turned the exhibition’s critical attention back onto its own use of photography and display.

An Information Lounge functioned as a space for research, discussion, workshops, and visitor responses. Its Facing Hi/stories installation followed 15 individuals whose remains could be seen in the panorama. Bringing together historical research, information from the museum’s inventory books, and physical-anthropological analysis, it juxtaposed different ways of knowing what could still be learned about these individuals – and what could not. Throughout the exhibition, members of the Dead Images team were present to speak with visitors. Workshops, discussions, an evolving library, written questions, and anonymous feedback cards made these encounters part of the project itself. More than 200 completed cards were collected by the end of the exhibition. Rather than separating research, exhibition, and public engagement, the programme treated the responses and disagreements generated by the exhibition as another stage of the research.

---