Microbial Co-editing: On Images about Nothing

Images are typically read through a fixation on the framer, the framed, and the material. In the hands of ethnographers, they acquire a fixed taxonomic status. This enshrines the image in a kind of permanence. In terms of chemical photography, the fixed, permanent, and unchanging character also finds some affinity in the medium itself. The notion of fixing is not only a sociological reading but also inscribed in the material processes where images need to be fixed after they have been developed.

However, given the susceptibility of the material to undergo various levels of deterioration, usually by fungi, microbes, and other organisms, the image can be thought of as constantly under the threat of impermanence. This plasticity and mutability of the image in the face of other organisms is where my interest lies. I consider these fungal microbial activities as a process of co-editing or unfixing the image.  My research seeks to investigate microbial life that co-edits images designated as fixed, and by so doing, works antithetical to the image of permanence. In what ways do they unfix the image? What are the political implications of such activities if fixing is necessarily a political act?