Opening
Thursday, September 8, 2005, 7 p.m.

The opening will be presided by Dr. Nikolaus Duregger, Cultural Department of the Tyrolean Provincial Government. Introduction to the exhibition by Christine Frisinghelli, editor of Camera Austria, Graz

A joint project with Camera Austria, Graz

The exchange between Camera Austria and the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the past years led to a truly comprehensive project. While doing field work in Algeria between 1958 and 1961 Pierre Bourdieu created photographs that are both exemplary of his earliest output and still topical today. He entrusted his archive to Franz Schultheis and Camera Austria so that these photographs could be presented to the public in both an exhibition and publication. Together, Pierre Bourdieu (who died in early 2002) and Franz Schultheis look through and struc tured the photographic material, relating it to ethnographic and sociological studies he produced at the same time in Algeria. The exhibition “Pierre Bourdieu: In Algeria: Testimonies of Uprooting” will show the historical, political, scientific but also biographical contexts in which these photographs were created.

In the course of a conversation with Pierre Bourdieu on his Algeria studies attention shifted to these (to date largely unpublished) photographs with spontaneous curiosity soon giving way to the idea of this project, namely to present to the public a still unknown facet of Bourdieu’s ethnology. These photographs from Algeria constitute important primary material from an ethnographic perspective. They cannot be viewed and interpreted detached from the knowledge and interests motivating the selection of motives, the given perspective, the inclusion of context and the construction of the subject to be captured without neglecting the context-specific social meaning and political dimension of this imagery. The images are already “framed” and dated by the conditions in which they evolved, placed in a clearly defined socio-historical context. They are meant to document something in a specific way, or in Bourdieu’s term: to ‘objectify’ something.

All of the main themes of Bourdieu’s sociology are present in this early phase. He explores the subliminal rules of exchange, the social embedding of economy, the relation of temporal structures to rationality, the symbolic structures of society and the power relations between genders, generations and social classes. These are questions that are also of significant cognitive import for his later writings. The photographs are considered a “pivotal work”, serving as catalyst for unearthing various complex themes that are intrinsic to Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical work.

Bourdieu’s pioneering field studies that are now for the first time complemented by photographic components provide insight into the nascent state of his sociology. In addition to this historical dimension of his oeuvre Bourdieu’s photographs, however, also retain the character of a compelling socio-historical document. They are evidence of a social world replete with non-simultaneities, whose people even today have not succeeded in overcoming their homelessness and lack of roots – an alienation vis-à-vis both tradition and modernism. Perhaps Algeria’s tragic dimension manifested here is to be found in the fact that even after four decades the photographs have not lost any of their topicality and realism.

The exhibition was curated by Christine Frisinghelli, Camera Austria, Graz, and Franz Schultheis, Fondation Pierre Bourdieu, Départment de Sociologie, Université de Genève.

Lecture
Franz Schultheis
Algeria 1960: Pierre Bourdieu’s Apprenticeship Years in a Sociological Lab
Monday, October 10, 2005, 7 p.m.

Univ.Prof. Dr. Franz Schultheis is head of the Institute of Sociology of the University of Geneva and president of the Pierre Bourdieu Foundation, Geneva.

Publication
German edition
Pierre Bourdieu: In Algerien. Zeugnisse der Entwurzelung
240 pp., 170 black-and-white illustrations, Edition Camera Austria,
Graz 2003, ISBN: 3-900508-47-X, price: € 25,-

French edition
Pierre Bourdieu: Images d’Algérie. Une affinité élective
240 pp., 170 black-and-white illustrations, Actes Sud, Paris 2003
ISBN: 2-7427-4136-4, price: € 25,-