ד"ר ורד מימון

Education:

2006 - Ph.D.  Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, New York

2001 - M.Phil. The Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, New York

1997 - M.A. The Department of Poetics and Comparative Literature, The Porter Institute    for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University  Honors: Summa Cum Laude

1991 - B.A. The Department of Film and Television and The Department of Poetics and   Comparative Literature, Tel Aviv University  Honors: Magna Cum Laude

Fellowships and Awards:

2007-2008: J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities, The Getty Foundation

2002-2003: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, Columbia University, New York

1999-2001: Fulbright Graduate Student Grant, United States-Israel Educational Foundation

Teaching Experience:

2012:            Senior Lecturer, Department of Art History, Tel Aviv University

2010-2012:  Teaching Fellow, Department of Art History, Tel Aviv University

Lecturer, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Department of History and Theory and MFA program                    

2009-2010:  Zacks Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Hebrew University of       Jerusalem

2008-2009:  Full-Time Lecturer, Department of Art and Design, Northeastern University

My research in the last few years is conducted in two main fields: contemporary art theory and criticism, and the history and theory of photography. What unites all my research projects is a long-term interest in epistemological problems and questions, in particular the relation between visual systems of representation, mainly photography, film and video, and forms of knowledge. In my work, I explore the so-called “truth” and evidentiary claims that are associated with or attributed to different media in relation to specific historical and social contexts. Following Foucault, my work shows that there are different ways of seeing and making things visible, that is, there are different “technologies” of seeing, yet the problem of technology is never simply technical or mechanical but has to be addressed in relation to broad historical, epistemological, social and cultural concerns.

In the field of contemporary art my work is focused on video works by artists such as Pierre Huyghe and Walid Raad/Atlas Group, and film makers such as Chris Marker, Abbas Kiarostami and Pedro Costa whose projects focuses on the reenactment and staging of “real” events by actors and the fabrication of a “documentary” rhetoric of film making.

Within the history and theory of photography, I publish regularly on writings by contemporary theorists and works by specific artists. I just completed a book manuscript titled “The Photographic Imagination” which is based on research I conducted for my dissertation at Columbia University. The book focuses on the first decade of paper photography in England, in particular the images and texts of William Henry Fox Talbot. It is an interdisciplinary project which locates the conditions for the emergence of photography within the legacy of British empiricism and the introduction of time into formations of knowledge. The book is forthcoming from Minnesota University Press in 2015.

Books

2015    The Photographic Imagination: Talbot and the Conception of Photography in the Early Nineteenth-Century, Minnesota University Press (forthcoming)

Edited Books

2009    Co-editor, Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics, Duke University Press

Articles in Books

2013    “Talbot’s Art of Discovery.” Essay included in the collection William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography, Yale University Press and the Yale Center for British Art

Articles in Journals

2012    “Beyond Representation: Abbas Kiarostami’s and Pedro Costa’s Minor Cinema.” Third Text 26:3 (May 2012)

2011    “On the Singularity of Early Photography: William Henry Fox Talbot’s Botanical Images.” Art History 34:5 (November 2011)

2010    “Michael Fried’s Modernist Theory of Photography.” History of Photography 34:4 (Winter 2010)

“Towards a New Image of Politics: Chris Marker Staring Back.” Oxford Art Journal, 33:1 (March 2010)

2009    “The Third Citizen: On Models of Criticality in Contemporary Art.” October 129 (Summer 2009) 

2008    “Displaced ‘Origins’: William Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature.” History of Photography 32:4(Winter 2008)