PHOTOGRAPHIC SELF-REPRESENTATION OF MEN IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES
Media Amateurs in Gay Culture investigates the dynamics of social taboos, the forging of identity
and the practice of visual self-representation by amateurs. Taking gay male self-representation
on the Web 2.0 as a point of departure, it addresses issues related to the history of private
communication through images and the hybridization of private spheres in gay milieus, an area on which surprisingly little research has been done to date.
NEUERSCHEINUNG: PRIVAT/öFFENTLICH. MEDIALE SELBSTENTWÜRFE VON HOMOSEXUALITäT
privat / öffentlich. Mediale Selbstentwürfe von Homosexualität Hg. von Susanne Regener / Katrin Köppert Turia + Kant 2013, 203 S., 30 s/w Abb., EUR 20,–, ISBN 978-3-85132-692-5 Selbstentwürfe werden sichtbar in so verschiedenen Medien wie Fotografien, Scrapbooks, amateurhaften … more
EVERYDAY PERCEPTION OF AIDS IN LOS ANGELES AND SAN FRANCISCO – A “FIELD REPORT” (BY KATRIN KöPPERT)
Going by bus in Los Angeles is always an adventure. Not just that it takes you ages getting from one spot to the other it offers you an insight in the American society you would not expect on the first sight. Are all the homeless people being in such a bad shape a marker for the financial crisis and the expression of this deep gap evolving out of capitalism? Without being polemic speaking about the American society in its complexity and often astonishingly ambivalences the issue of homelessness intersects with my second observation in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
moreLECTURE JENNIFER EVANS: QUEERING THE GAYS/GAZE
On April 26th 2012 at 7:30pm Jennifer Evans will give a lecture within the context of the lecture series ´Talking Eyes` and in cooperation with the Media Amateur research project as well as with the C/O Berlin-International Forum for Visual Dialogues on the subject of “Queering the Gays/Gaze: sex, street, and subculture in 1970s queer erotic photography” in the C/O Berlin. Katrin Köppert will present the talk.
morePROJECT-RELATED RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
As part of my first research trip to the United States I visited a number of archives in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Historical/archival research is a key aspect of the project Media Amateurs in Gay Culture: in order to formulate theories on the media history of self-staging by gay men we first of all have to access relevant self-narratives. Whereas nowadays self-images can be quickly and easily accessed via YouTube, Flickr and Facebook, or by using the smartphone technology that is becoming an increasingly important and integral part of people’s personal lives, the material required for an historical perspective can often only be obtained through painstaking research and analysis.
moreCOOPERATION WITH THE MPIB-PROJECT “ANDERS FüHLEN”
The project team behind Media Amateurs in Gay Culture cooperates with colleagues from the project anders fühlen, part of the Research Center for the History of Emotions,which is headed by Prof. Dr. Ute Frevert at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (MPIB) in Berlin.
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