Kerstin Hamilton
About Kerstin Hamilton
Kerstin Hamilton is an artist, artistic researcher, curator, and teacher. Her work explores experimental documentary photography with a particular interest in the connections between the natural sciences and photography.
In the ongoing postdoctoral research project (2024–), images of science made by photographer Berenice Abbott at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1950s provides the point of departure. Using novel photographic techniques of her time, Abbott visualised physical mechanisms of the world such as motion, magnetism, and light. Photography was for Abbott a tool to foster historical knowledge essential for democratic citizenship. Hamilton's investigation is carried out by way of artistic research comprising fieldwork in scientific laboratories, archival research, photographic experimentation, and theoretical analysis. The artistic process is visually and conceptually informed by Abbott’s progressive work from 1939 until the early 1960s. The research, which re-activates the visual and ideological discussion instigated by Abbott in the mid 20th century, explores questions such as: How can collaboration between artists and scientists lead to new and important knowledges? How can visual research contribute to generative situations and modes of imagination that make a difference (Stengers, 2016)? What is the relationship between the image and the world it depicts? How can images meaningfully reveal reality in times of AI and post-truth, where “the lost distinction between fact and fiction” provides an ideal environment for resurgent totalitarianisms (Arendt, 1973 {1951}). The postdoc project is financed by Hasselblad Foundation and the University of Gothenburg and is carried out in collaboration with researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology.
Hamilton's PhD project The Objectivity Laboratory: Propositions on Documentary Photography investigates experimental approaches within contemporary documentary photography and discusses the relation between documentary, photography, post-truth and ethical considerations. The dissertation draws on feminist science studies and activates perspectives from Karen Barad and Donna Haraway to articulate “propositions” that address the documentary blockages that define photography’s framework and possibilities.
Main artistic outcomes of Hamilton's practice-based research – which was carried out in nanotechnology laboratories – are the film Zero Point Energy (2016) which was part of The New Human exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Malmö and the two image/text/installation based artworks The Science Question in Feminism (2018) and A World Made by Science (2018) made for the 2018 Riga Biennal Of Contemporary Art.
With the curated exhibition Dear Truth: Documentary Strategies in Contemporary Photography at Hasselblad Center, Hamilton investigated how artists approach complex social and political realities in times of post-truth. Photography is in the exhibition applied as an experimental, inclusive and expanded medium. The exhibition presented artist’s works that insist upon the importance of seeing, knowing and reacting to the complexities and disorders characteristic of our time. Truth and a “situated objectivity” are investigated as radical tools in the artist’s approach of urgent matters in the world. A commitment to credible, rich, situated knowledges with a basis in reality materialises.
In 2023, she, along with Alexandra A. Ellis, curated the exhibition Super Sight: A World Viewed Through Technology. By examining various points in history – from the documentary photographs of magnetic fields and sound waves in the 1950s to today's artificial intelligence – the exhibition drew attention to how technological advancements enable different approaches to understanding reality.
Hamilton's work has been presented at the Moderna Museet, Sweden, Riga International Biennial of Art (RIBOCA), Fotohof in Salzburg, Austria, Art Initiative, Stockholm School of Economics and Chalmers University of Technology among other venues.
Exhibitions and artworks:
Super Sight: A World Viewed Through Technology at Västerbottens museum. (2023–2024)
To download the dissertation The Objectivity Laboratory: Propositions on Documentary Photography and access the artworks and curatorial work that the research contains, click here. (2022)
Dear Truth: Documentary Strategies in Contemporary Photography at the Hasselblad Foundation website. (2021)
Information about the work presented at the Riga Biennal Of Contemporary Art can be found here. (2018)
The film Zero Point Energy is available here. (2016)
Image credit: Cecilia Sandblom, Hasselblad Foundation.