"How soon will anyone dare photograph peppers, after Weston?" – Hollis Frampton’s ADSVMVS ABSVMVS (1982) at Museum Folkwang (2018)

Between November 5-27, 1982 the 14 photographs of Hollis Frampton’s ADSVMVS ABSVMVS, In memory of Hollis William Frampton, Sr., 1913-1980, abest could be studied at the Visual Studies Workshop Gallery in Rochester, New York. The series and exhibition presented a collection of dried, decomposed, skinned, and flattened plants and animals displayed on a black ground and provided visitors with a brochure, which contained a short introductory text, the Latin classifications of each specimen, miniature reproductions of their photographic representations, and short descriptive captions for each image. From April 13-May 13, 2018, an original set of Frampton’s ADSVMVS ABSVMVS was presented at UG im Folkwang, Museum Folkwang, in Essen, Germany. The exhibition was conceived as a critical reiteration of Frampton’s own show in Rochester by Anne Breimaier at Free University Berlin, Matthias Gründig at Folkwang University of the Arts (Essen, Germany) and students from both universities. The project allowed all participants to conduct in-depth research on ADSVMVS ABSVMVS and its specific imagery and texts, which were understood as a complex collection of palimpsests, a system of referential opulence, and an installation with its own spatial choreography. For the Hollis Frampton panel at CAA Chicago 2020, I propose presenting selected results from this educational and curatorial project - the first solo exhibition of Frampton's photographic work in Europe. Within my proposed presentation, I suggest using ADSVMVS ABSVMVS as a key to retrospectively understanding Frampton’s conceptual work between 1958-1984 as a performative renegotiation of paradigms in the history and contemporary practice of photography and film.