Researcher and cataloguer of 19th and 20th century photography at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Esther Scholtes (NL, 1992) is an art historian and photography theorist. She completed two Bachelors in Arts Sociology and Philosophy from the University of Groningen and she graduated her Research Master in Art History from Leiden University in 2018 with a thesis on intermedial photographic and cartographic practices. She has worked at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam and press photo agency ANP in The Hague and currently holds a position as cataloguer of the photography collection at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. She has published on contemporary and historical photography and is a member of the editorial board of the Amsterdam-based art journal Kunstlicht.
Research interests
Her research interests include the historiography of photography, 19th century optical instruments and theories of intermediality. Furthermore her research is focused on the methodological consequences of new technologies for art theory and photography in its connections to land and cartography.
Recent works/publications
‘The Algorithmic Index: Perspectives on the Virtual and the Spectator through David Claerbout's Olympia’, Kunstlicht 40 (2019), no. 4,pp.14-23.
‘Terra Nullius. Cartographic Metaphors in-between World and Representation’, Kunstlicht 41 (2020), no. 2/3, pp. 10–18.
‘Ed, man with a photo camera. On authorship in photographic mediation’, Simulacrum 19 (2020), no. 1, pp. 24–30.
‘Op zoek naar een droge plaat. De 'culinaire' experimenten van de Britse amateurfotograaf Baynham Jones’, De Boekenwereld 37 (2021), no. 1, pp. 52-56
