Exposing photographic archives Lighting the Archive which went online in 2020 is an
open-ended series of conversations with artists like Annette Kelm Elfie Semotan Wolfgang
Tillmans and Ulrich Wüst about photographic techniques structures of order and
materialities. The conversations are invariably framed by questions about where the
photographers see their life's works and legacies over the long term-what in other words is
to become of their oeuvres one day. In Exposing Tears Lighting the Archive engage the writer
and curator Mike Sperlinger in dialogue. Sperlinger studied the careers of the photographers
Marianne Wex and Chauncey Hare through the lens of the art market's economy of attention and
interwove biographical facts with external circumstances shaping their paths including their
withdrawals from the art system and their eventual rediscovery as forgotten artists. An essay
by Mike Sperlinger relates how the latter was possible Lighting the Archive's Maren
Lübbke-Tidow and Rebecca Wilton spoke to the author to discuss the central role that the
question of the archive played in his efforts.
