ONLINE WORKSHOP

REVERSING PERSPECTIVES

RETHINKING PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES THROUGH ARTISTIC PRACTICE

REIN JELLE TERPSTRA

VISUAL ARTIST

Photographs in an archive have often been withdrawn from public life. Stemming from a medium that once dynamically permeated all layers of society - from magazines to family albums - their circulation in the archive has been slowed, if not halted altogether. Sentenced to a life of retirement. Archives also perform authority. Together with an appearance of objectivity, they make a claim to truth and authenticity - a claim that, since the late 1990s, artists have been exposing, questioning, and working against. Archival material is often used as raw material for manipulation, recontextualization, and counter-narrative. This shift coincided with photography's broader transition from an iconic medium anchored in print culture to one dispersed - and destabilized - across social media.

Before we build, we reflect. The workshop opens with an artist talk and referential artist’ practices and theoretical discussion. We approach the archive from the reversed perspective: instead of entering one as a researcher or viewer, we find ourselves constructing one. Through hands-on, experience-based work, we examine what an archive actually is - how it is ordered and made retrievable, how principles of inclusion and exclusion operate, and what a typology can and cannot do.

Working collectively or individually, we will build temporary archives and test its logic from the inside. The central questions are curatorial and conceptual: what sensation or argument should this archive produce? What should it make visible - and what does it inevitably suppress? How does an archive hover between history and imagination, evidence and construction, between library and photo gallery?

In addition to the approach described above, participants are also welcome to bring their own existing archive to examine as a case study within the framework of the workshop.

COURSE SCHEDULE  (UK timezone)

Fri, 6 Nov 2026 — 5-8 pm

Sat, 7 Nov 2026 — 10 am - 1 pm & 3 pm - 6 pm

Rein Jelle Terpstra investigates the relationships between perception, memory and photography, by focusing on research, collaboration with various parties within and outside the arts, and the compilation and (re)contextualization of existing visual material or stories. His work is exhibited at the SFMOMA (San Francisco), the International Center of Photography (New York), Les Rencontres d'Arles, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, and recently at MAMbo, the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna and is held in various collections, including the collection of the SFMOMA (San Francisco), MoMA Library (New York), EYE Film Museum (Amsterdam), Nederlands Fotomuseum (Rotterdam), and the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles). His film Robert F Kennedy Funeral Train – The People’s View was part of Best of Selected Artist Moving Images, EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, and his book (with the same title) was awarded with a Golden medal for The Most Beautiful Book in the World, by the international committee of Stiftung Buchkunst, Germany.

Terpstra undertook a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington, D.C., USA. He teaches fine arts, film and photography at Hanze University of Applied Science- Minerva Art Academy, Groningen and other art institutions internationally, and is mentor for artists. Rein Jelle Terpstra, lives and works in Amsterdam