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To Remain Fixed Upon the Paper: Antonio Nessi’s Lake Como Photographs
Published Web Location
https://doi.org/10.5070/R5.66231Abstract
Faye Dowling asks what historiographies can be revealed in the unstable ontology of a lakebed. Her approach to Mexico City’s Lake Texcoco is mediated by Colombian artist Adriana Salazar’s multimedia project, including a 2014 field photograph of the empty basin. Salazar’s work reveals an alternate ethnography, allowing the lake to divulge its multiple temporalities and celebrating what Dowling refers to as the unanchored and indeterminate qualities of a lake. In this response, I use Dowling’s idea of the unstable lake to place Lake Como, the alleged birthplace of landscape photography, as a site resistant to fixity through the photographs of Como resident Antonio Nessi.