Mimmo Cozzolino

AFTER I DIE. Archives, photography and autobiography. Thesis accepted in satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Art, Faculty of Art Design & Architecture, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

The impetus for this Master of Fine Art research came from something that aroused my curiosity: what was in the accumulation of personal photographs I had kept since my late teens? My adoption of photography had been partly cultural and partly because, as a designer, it was a tool of my profession. When, after 30 years as a designer, I decided to focus exclusively on my art practice, my archive intuitively seemed the right place to start. Thousands of photographic images, a lot of them autobiographical, had collected. Yet, over the years, I had done little with them. Most negatives had remained unprinted, and I could not remember what was on most of them. After organizing and familiarizing myself with my archive, a question surfaced: could these photographs become the basis of an autobiography?

After I die. Archives, photography and autobiography traces my research into the meaning of archives. I look at artists’ archives and how artists use them to create work. Warhol, Richter, subReal, Mandel and Sultan specifically worked with archives to make art.

To understand photographic autobiography I researched how artists and photographers had engaged with this emerging genre. Conceptualist Sol LeWitt’s Autobiography: Sol LeWitt 1980 (1980) was a revelation: a book of 1,092 photographs and just four words. It became my inspiration and from it I understood that a photographic autobiography did not necessarily have to include self-portraits. I went further: I concluded that every photograph I have ever taken reflects who I am. Richard Avedon’s An autobiography (1993)– another book of many photographs and few words– strengthened my resolve to explore photographic autobiography further. Theoretical issues relating to autobiography also became an important focus.

The number of informal self-portraits I found in my early photographs led me investigate the concept of narcissism and the role it plays in human development. I marvelled at how the myth of Narcissus and the enterprise of photography have uncanny connections. Lacan’s mirror stage is discussed in relation to self-realisation.

The exegesis concludes that reflecting on the future of my archive has helped me to confront my own mortality. After initial dismay about my inevitable demise I embarked on a strategy to transfer some work from my private archive into public archives through the creation and publication of nine photographic artist’s books under the series FRAGMENTS OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.