Punctum [Aperture – Lumen]

Punctum, a term in Latin that translates as ‘point’ or ‘period’, is often used to designate a discrete unit or spatial position in a variety of anatomical, biological, and astronomical contexts. In his seminal work Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes elaborates on punctum as the intensive, sensory focus of a photograph: that which pierces the viewer and establishes a direct relationship with its depicted subject. This talk traces points of connection between the images of Auguste Nicolas Adolphe Bertsch (1813–1871), a French camera inventor who specialized in documenting microscopic organic fragments using solar projection, and the self-experimental practice of Ana María Gómez López involving the creation of small-scale anatomical and ecological interventions, materially tangible yet barely visible to the human eye. Spanning the miniscule and the cosmological, the corporeal and the temporal, this presentation examines the dynamic photographic traditions of late 19th century Paris through the lens of minutiae, the scale of a punctum: a drop of human blood, the bore of a needle shaft, the head of a match, and a speck of cosmic dust, to name a few.

Ana María Gómez López is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. Her practice centers on self-experimentation, definitions of biological life, legacies of utopian thought, and archival research in the history of science. Ana María was selected for a 2023 CIFO-Ars Electronica Award, to be exhibited at the Lentos Kunstmuseum. Her work has been shown at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Fonds d’art contemporain Genève, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, V2_Lab for Unstable Media, Rencontres Internationales, and DOK Leipzig. She was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten and has held fellowships at the Osler Library for the History of Medicine, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, International Institute for Social History, and Max Planck Institute for History of Science. Ana María was a 2015 recipient of the Premio Nacional de Artes (National Award in the Arts) in Colombia.

The Rendez-Vous de l’Institut Series is generously supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. You will find a full calendar of the Fellows’ Talk here.