I have an old camera with which I have taken countless photographs of myself. It often produces astonishing effects, Edvard Munch states in a 1930 interview. Someday when I am old and have nothing better to do than work on an autobiography, all my photographic self-portraits will see the light of day again. The autobiography was never realised, but the self-portraits have found their way to the pages of The Experimental Self. The Photography of Edvard Munch, which demonstrates the fundamentally experimental nature of the artists photographic practice. As a photographer, Munch embraced the freedom provided by the amateur position, and the unpredictable aspects of analogue photographic technology. By playfully approaching his own image in picture after picture, Munch extends his explorations of selfhood in other media through photography. The resulting photographs provide unique access to Munchs radical artistic vision, which this book studies through eminent essays by Patricia G. Berman, Tom Gunning and MaryClaire Pappas.

A collection of 11 new essays by internationally renowned scholars and artists navigating the vast inter-disciplinary territory defined by fine art, architecture and the moving image. One of the fundamental events of modernity was the conquest of the world as picture, a process in which cinema was essential. Cinema was the single medium capable of capturing what Alexander Kluge describes as the ”the impossible moment”: a moment we couldn’t imagine beforehand, and which cannot be repeated later. Cities, bridges, ideas, gestures, skyscrapers, literature and art are all affected. The collection was initiated during the two-day symposium Urban Images in September 2010, hosted by Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Featured essays by Giuliana Bruno, Bull.Miletic, Andreas Bunte, Beatriz Colomina, Ed Dimendberg, Tom Gunning, Kathrin Meyer, Marit Paasche, and Judy Radul.