Kerstin Hamilton
About Kerstin Hamilton
I am a lecturer in photography and an artistic researcher working with practice-based methods. As a postdoctoral researcher in photography and the natural sciences at HDK-Valand and the Hasselblad Foundation, I investigated experimental forms of documentary photography, with a particular focus on the intersections between photography and the natural sciences.
This research began with an exploration of the photographs Berenice Abbott made of scientific phenomena at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1950s. Using groundbreaking photographic techniques, Abbott visualised physical mechanisms in the world—such as motion, magnetism, and light. For Abbott, photography was a tool for advancing public understanding of scientific knowledge, something she considered fundamental to a democratic society.
Since 2024, my artistic research has been based at Chalmers University of Technology and the Onsala Space Observatory south of Gothenburg. I work with photography, film, and montage, and my methods include fieldwork at the observatory, archival research, curatorial practice, and theoretical contextualisation. The work is visually and conceptually informed by Abbott’s progressive work from the 1930s to the 1960s and seeks to reactivate the visual and ideological discussion she initiated. The notion of choreographies of science frames the exploration.
Image and documentation of the ongoing project at https://kerstinhamilton.com/works/.
My artistic research is based at the Onsala Space Observatory, located on the west coast of Sweden. I work with photography, film and montage and my methods include fieldwork at the observatory, archival research, curatorial practice and theoretical contextualisation. The research is visually and conceptually informed by Abbott’s progressive work between the 1930s and the early 1960s and seeks to reactivate the visual and ideological discourse she initiated.
The research is grounded in the hypothesis that, in a time of increasing disinformation and resistance to knowledge, it is relevant to direct attention to – and make visible – the procedures of science. Scientific knowledge is shaped by rigorous and often time-consuming processes, including experimentation, observation, and verification, all aimed to ensure that results are reliable and reproducible.
This “choreography of science” – a set of well rehearsed movements, interactions with instruments, routines, and methods – structures how scientific knowledge is produced. These choreographies are embedded in both historical and contemporary scientific practice. In my research, I explore how they are enacted at the Onsala Space Observatory today and in the past.
My previous PhD project The Objectivity Laboratory: Propositions on Documentary Photography investigated experimental approaches within contemporary documentary photography, discussing 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 the research project – 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.
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 which was part of The New Human exhibition at Moderna Museet is available here. (2016)
Image credit: Cecilia Sandblom, Hasselblad Foundation.