What question did this study set out to answer?

The project aims to examine what additional aspects are aesthetically made during photographic production and explore its implications for photographic practice.

June 19, 2026Open Access

The Aesthetics of Photographic Production

Key Points

The project aims to examine what additional aspects are aesthetically made during photographic production and explore its implications for photographic practice.
Conducted through a long-term practice research project (2018–24) funded by AHRC.
Utilized sensory field encounters in commercial laboratories and manufacturing sites including Fujifilm and Polaroid.
Organized around four thematic subpages: tensioning, tearing, fogging, and fieldwork.
Highlights the aesthetic dimensions beyond traditional photographic images.
Emphasizes practices like calibration, residue, and non-image making through sensory materials.
Promotes a broader understanding of photographic knowledge as a multisensory engagement.

Abstract

The Aesthetics of Photographic Production is a media-rich Research Catalogue exposition emerging from an AHRC-funded long-term practice research project (2018–24) that investigates photographic production as a multisensory, material, and more-than-human field of making. The project’s dissemination strategy is threefold: this exposition, a published monograph (Jaeger 2025), and the performance and exhibition of artworks, each calibrated to communicate the research through distinct epistemic affordances. Grounded in sensory field encounters within commercial laboratories and manufacturing facilities — Bayeux London, Make it Easy Lab Nottingham, Fujifilm Tilburg, and Polaroid Enschede — the exposition foregrounds production ecologies where photographic work emerges through distributed relations among technicians, machines, paper, chemistry, protocols, speed, and darkness. The exposition is organised by two objectives: to examine what else besides the photograph is aesthetically made in photographic production, and to explore the implications of this shift for the concept of photographic practice (Jaeger 2025). These aims are pursued through four subpages — tensioning, tearing, fogging, and fieldwork — which assemble visual, sonic, and audiovisual materials to render process insights encounterable. Rather than privileging the finished image, the exposition attends to practices of calibration, residue, and non-image making, where touch, listening, rhythm, and material agency become central to photographic knowledge and to expanded understandings of photographic practice. /* rules to make button only show up in META */. download-accessible display: none;. meta-right-col. download-accessible display: inline-block; padding: 9px; margin-bottom: 25px; border: 1px solid black; background-color: white;Download Accessible PDF keywords: Posthuman performativity, aesthetic experience, production process, photographic practice, beyond representation, post-photography, material Imagination, material engagement, production aesthetics, PHOTOGRAPHY, photographic methods, photograph, photosculpture, photogrammetry, photographic thinking

The Aesthetics of Photographic Production

Key Points

Abstract

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