Jana J. Haeckel's peer reviewed article "Embracing the not-knowing: rethinking photographic and curatorial practices as collaborations of care" published in photographies, Volume 18, Issue 1: On Photography and Care, edited by Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad, Elin Haugdal, Stephanie von Spreter, and Hanne Hammer Stien.
This essay discusses the act of photography and curating as a form of caring and collective world-building. Reflecting on my own practice as curator and educator working on and with photographic images, I introduce two artistic projects by the collective Troubled Archives and Bianca Baldi, who both critically engage with problematic colonial image archives. The discussed works offer powerful counter-imagery and give visibility to lived realities that are left out, erased, or forgotten in the legacies of hegemonic knowledge. By referring to Carine Zaayman’s concept of the ‘anarchival’ that relates to embodied knowledge production and operates from a place of ‘not-knowing’, the essay meditates on the struggles when working within the curatorial field and, on this basis, gives suggestions how institutions could handle the sensitive subject matter to practice care and collaboration in its best possible ways.
