Scratches, Holes, and Spots: Decay and Disappearance of Early Dance Photography Isa Wortelkamp (Leipzig) The article is dedicated to archival documents of early dance photography that are marked by traces of use, threatened by decay, or deliberately destroyed. Taking the example of the photographic series of Olga Desmond ’ s Sword Dance (phot. Otto Skowranek 1908), which is riddled with bullet holes, the aesthetic appearance and material conditions of the object will be examined in order to present different approaches to dealing with historical documents of dance photography. Following the idea of ‘ potential disturbances ’ that the art historian Peter Geimer identifies when he challenges the established history of photographic images in his essay Inadvertent Images: A History of Photographic Apparitions (Hamburg 2010), the injured surface of dance photography will be read as evidence that our view is always informed by that which remains invisible, behind the picture, and outside of its margins: the traces of its own history, found in the disturbances of our gaze. Introduction Dance photography implies a paradoxical presence of what has passed: a dancer ’ s leap before landing, the beginning of a twist, the balance of an arabesque - moments of movements. Within the photography of dance, a shift takes place from a continuously changing process of physical actions to the material framework of a picture. But at the same time, photography goes beyond the depiction and fixation of a ‘ real ’ moment and can be seen as an artwork that follows the artistic perspective of a photographer. The interferences of dance and photography - in terms of their technical and aesthetic qualities - require an interdisciplinary perspective, connecting expertise in the field of dance studies, photography, and art theory. Analysis of dance photography always has to deal with the choreographed movement and the photographed moment, with the physical action of the dancer ’ s body and the aesthetic principles and the technical conditions of the picture. Finally, as a medium of reproduction, photography has many ‘ faces ’ and appears in different forms that suggest a specific point of view and use: as print media in academic dance publications, illustrated books, and magazines, digitized in internet portals, or, last but not least, as historical reproduction or so-called ‘ vintage prints ’ in archives. As historiographical documents, they do not just bear witness to the history of what they depict, but are marked by history itself: the history of how they were made, their appearance, and their use. In their material and aesthetic composition, dance photographs refer beyond their status as relics from another time. In my research, I examine dance photography of the early 20 th century not primarily as a document of a past event, but as an encounter between two art forms at a time when dance and photography were looking for new concepts of movement. Within the development of modern dance, interest shifted towards the free presentation of movement, towards expansive and expressive gestures, rejecting the aesthetic and technical principles of classical ballet. Photography had up until then been mainly Forum Modernes Theater, 32/ 2 (2021), 254 - 263. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.2357/ FMTh-2021-0023 concerned with depictions of static poses in ballet and in photographs of actors; due to the technical progress of motion photography and of impressionistic painting, photography then focused on the pictorial shaping of movement. The aesthetics of early dance photography are characterized by a reciprocal relationship between image and movement; this is reflected in art and media around 1900, in the context of the artistic and technical development of dance and photography. 1 This encounter took place predominantly in photographic studios, in which the majority of dance photographs were taken. Such photographs served as publicity for the dancers or were the result of the photographer ’ s interest in the motifs of dancers ’ movements. 2 As the interest in dance shifted towards the free presentation of movement, photography, which had, until then, mainly been concerned with the depiction of static poses in ballet and in photographs of actors, intensified to focus on the fleeting nature of the image. The ephemerality and transitory art of dance thus confronted photography ’ s qualities of fixity and reproducibility. 3 The difference between these two media justifies an understanding of photography as an image in which movement becomes the creative principle. Beyond the capturing and documentation of a single moment, movement shows itself to be an effect of the interference between dance and photography, created by both photographic and choreographic means. The view to the aesthetic of the picture relativizes the secondary status of dance photographs as a document of a past event. This secondary status has characterized the historiographical treatment of dance photography, in which photography has been understood as a depiction of reality that inevitably fails because of the difference introduced through its mediation. The aesthetics of dance photography around 1900 reveal much more than an understanding of photography in its referential and documentary functions, pointing instead to the aesthetic logic and the material conditions of the medium itself. Traces of the history of the photographic document become apparent through signs of decay and disappearance. While viewing over 4000 dance photographs in various archives, again and again I came across pictures that hardly or never found their way into historiography; on the one hand, because they depict dancers who received little attention within the dance theoretical and historical discourses; on the other hand, because the damage to the material is so extensive that no suitable reproduction sample can be created for publications. These pictures are too delicate or already destroyed beyond recognition. The destruction can be attributed to a long process of decay or can occur all of a sudden by accident or pure coincidence. The spectrum of destruction ranges from chemical variability of the material, consequences of improper restoration, abrasion by storage, and damage done by mice or flyspeck, to scratches, holes, and stains. Sometimes damage is so extensive and the cost of restoration and conservation is so high that one must ask which photographs are worth preserving and which ones are not considered to be of archival quality and value. In such cases, they fall out of the range of sight of historiography. According to these preliminary remarks, I dedicate my paper to archival documents of early dance photography that are marked by traces of use, threatened by decay, or deliberately destroyed. Traces such as scratches, holes and spots not only ‘ touch ’ the photographic material, but also the photographed body of the dancer, who together with the picture is threatened with disintegration. Therefore, I do not refer here to the much-discussed transitory nature of dance, but to all those invisible and uncertain 255 Scratches, Holes, and Spots: Decay and Disappearance of Early Dance Photography aspects that accompany our dealings with dance photography. As the remains of history, these traces point to the possible decay and disappearance of the photographic material, which either is or becomes inaccessible as a historiographical document. Their absence in dance historiography reminds us of all that is unseen, stored in archives, retreating behind the universal visibility of infinitely reproducible pictures; their invisibility recalls traces of use or ageing that can be seen in photographs and interrupt our gaze. These photographs can be taken as examples of those “ potential disturbances ” that the art historian Peter Geimer identifies when he challenges the established history of photographic images in his essay Inadvertent Images: A History of Photographic Apparitions. 4 For Geimer, these disturbances are not a deficit, but represent a specific potential of photography insofar as they highlight its material conditionality in the photographic object. The paper addresses the potential of those disturbances for a methodical and theoretical approach to photography as an archival document. Taking the example of the photographic series of Olga Desmond ’ s Sword Dance (phot. Otto Skowranek 1908), riddled with bullet holes, I would like to examine their aesthetic appearance and material conditions in order to present some reflections on the historiographical treatment of early dance photography. The injured surface of the objects will be read as evidence that our view of dance photography is always informed by that which remains invisible, behind the picture, and outside of its margins: the traces of its own history, found in the disturbances of our gaze. Histories of a reflection: the photographic series on Olga Desmond ’ s Sword Dance (Schwertertanz) On a visit to the Dance Archive Cologne (Tanzarchiv Köln), I came across a series of photographs by Otto Skowraneck of Olga Desmond ’ s Sword Dance, showing the dancer in different poses. The series was published as a picture-folder by Verlag der Neuen Photographischen Gesellschaft A. G. in Steglitz-Berlin in 1910 and includes in its original form eleven silver gelatine prints (approx. 22 x 14 cm), mounted on loose sheets which are approximately equivalent to the size of the picture-folder (approx. 36 x 24 cm). This folder was published on the occasion of the performance of the dance in 1908 as part of the so-called Evenings of Beauty (Schönheitsabende), a series of events with projections of nude photography, tableaux vivants and dance performances that took place in Berlin. The Sword Dance, in which the dancer presented herself nearly naked in front of the audience, became a scandal and formed the core of the debate about naked dance at the Prussian house of representatives in 1909. 5 The performance of the dancer, arousing outrage as well as admiration in the press, became a sort of unveiling, by which the display of nakedness was brought to the awareness of the public: Miss Desmond, dressed up only with a diadem and a metal belt, dances in-between blinkingly erected sword blades a Sword Dance. She appears in a dragging, sky blue, satin coat - the music playing a seemingly oriental round dance with shrugging rhythms - suddenly the Desmond [sic] gets set, lets go of her coat abruptly and stands on the bright stage like Venus, when she was stepping on land at Paphos. 6 Opening the brown folder ’ s cover with the inscribed golden title “ Olga Desmond. 256 Isa Wortelkamp Fig. 1: Otto Skowraneck, Olga Desmond, Schwertertanz, Gelatine Silver Prints, Print: H 8 ¾ x 5 ¾, Paper: 14 1/ 8" x 9 3/ 4". 1908 Berlin © Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln. 257 Scratches, Holes, and Spots: Decay and Disappearance of Early Dance Photography Schwertertanz ” equals an unveiling in my own view as well. The photograph of the denuded body is covered with bullet holes, particularly hit on the breast, the stomach, the belt-covered genitalia and, a bit further down, the knees - misfired shots. The dancer, surrounded by the four points of swords (actually spearheads) protruding perpendicularly from the floor, stands upright in space facing the audience. Her diadem-crowned head is slightly elevated, and her eyes are directed above the lens into some empty horizon. Her almost naked body stands out brightly against the dark background. As if in contrast to the photographically staged sharpness of the metallically shiny spearheads, the flowered carpet appears to be soft and diffuse. Her legs are closed, while her straightened arms point symmetrically, and with a slight angle, sideways towards the back, emphasizing her chest. Her hands are bent upwards. The pose enhances the staged character of the scene: a body exposed to the gaze - violable and violated. Excursus with Roland Barthes: Bullet Holes as Punctum The damaged photograph of Olga Desmond is a testimony to this gaze. The act of photographing, as Roland Barthes points out in his photo-theoretical consideration Camera Lucida (1981), is always already closely connected to death. For him, the camera is an apparatus which is - equal to a rifle and triggered by a finger - executing a shot: And the person or thing photographed is the target, the referent, a kind of little simulacrum, and eidolon emitted by the object, which I should like to call the Spectrum of the Photograph, because this word retains, through its root, a relation to “ spectacle ” and adds to it that rather terrible thing which is there in every photograph: the return of the dead. 7 In the photograph of Olga Desmond, the ‘ killing ’ gaze at the dancer materializes as the gaze of the photographer and the gaze of the viewer. The latter has been leaving his traces here - every hit is a gaze at the body. Barthes, in his consideration of photography, contrasts studium with this reverse punctum, where punctum is a productive irritation and studium is a retracing of the photograph ’ s cultural and historical contexts and its condition of production. In order to comprehend punctum even more precisely, Barthes again makes use of the metaphor of the shot: This time it is not I who seek it out (as I invest the field of the studium with my sovereign consciousness), it is this element, which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me. A Latin word exists to designate this wound, this prick, this mark made by a pointed instrument: the word suits me all the better in that it also refers to the notion of punctuation, and because the photographs I am speaking of are in effect punctuated, sometimes even speckled with these sensitive points; precisely these marks, these wounds are so many points. This second element which will disturb the studium I shall therefore call punctum; for punctum is also: sting, speck, cut, little hole, - and also a cast of the dice. A photograph ’ s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me). 8 The bullet holes in the photograph of Olga Desmond strike and prick me. Impossible not to see them, to overlook them, in my reflection they become - way beyond the image shown - a reference to the photograph itself, its physical quality, its handling, its preservation as an object. “ Nach dem Leben photographiert ” is written beneath the bottom left of the photograph in the impressed border of the picture. This inscription implies ‘ Photographed according to life ’ as well as ‘ Photographed after life ’ , thereby indicating differ- 258 Isa Wortelkamp ent dimensions of temporality of the photographic document: firstly, the caption reminds one of the occasion of the shot, which lies at a temporal distance to the performance itself due to being - like most photographs of the time - a studio shot. At the same time, the note refers to life, to the claim of representing the actual execution of the performance, which has been denied to photography - and especially dance photography - at various points. Regarding the photographed body, the note “ Nach dem Leben photographiert ” accentuates further temporal dimensions of photography: the photograph after (the) life (temporal) and the photograph as a record of a living moment beyond (her or his) death (modal). Finally, the bullet holes add yet another presence to this continuing representation of the past: they themselves are effects of a performative act that inscribes itself as the history of the perception and handling of the photograph itself. The caption on the right side, beneath the picture - “ From the beauty-evening in Berlin ” ( “ Vom Schönheit-Abend in Berlin ” ) - is to be read as a reference to the performative act of the dancer herself. The ‘ From ’ sounds like a reverberation, a memory, and points out the crucial difference between shot and performance. In another line beneath the picture ’ s margin, the dancer ’ s name and the title of the performance are placed, centred and in capital letters; translations in French and English are positioned beneath. Information on the publisher Neue Photographische Gesellschaft A. G. Steglitz- Berlin can be found at the bottom of the sheet. The name of the photographer is not indicated. The information on the picture is also riddled, not by bullets, but by marks left by pins, found alongside the margins of the sheet - two at the top and two at the bottom. Apparently, the viewer, and/ or shooter, hung it up multiple times in order to aim their gaze and rifle at it. My own gaze at the bullet holes sways between the photograph and the photographed body, between paper and skin. The paper of the cardboard, as well as the one of the photographs, is violated. If one picks it up, one can see through it - one sees the archive, its shelves, its books, or the light falling through the window. If one turns it around, a pattern appears, vaguely swarm-like. All the photographs of the series on the Sword Dance are affected. From the librarian, I learn that the director of the archive knows the person who shot at the photographs, though would not provide any details for reasons of discretion. The fact that the picture-folder ended up in the archive - next to another non-damaged sample - indicates that, from the perspective of the archivists of the history of dance, it was to be preserved. Excursus with Richard Misrach: Photographed Traces - An Aesthetic Practice of Historiography The damaged picture-folder of Olga Desmond ’ s Sword Dance documents, way beyond dance history, a practice of image viewing commonly connected to viewing pin-up girls. This practice of image viewing, which manifests itself as a trace of violence on the surface of the photograph, has been photographically staged by the American artist Richard Misrach. The series, entitled “ Desert Cantos XI: The Playboys ” , documents two Playboy magazines which Misrach discovered in his documentation of a nuclear test site in the northwest corner of Nevada. The Playboy magazines were used for target practice by persons unknown. Although the shooters were apparently aiming at the cover girls, their bullets also pierced the interior pages, multiplying the violence within. 9 259 Scratches, Holes, and Spots: Decay and Disappearance of Early Dance Photography Fig. 2: Richard Misrach, Playboy #39 (Center Fold, Playmate of the Month), from Desert Canto XI: The Playboys; 1990 - 91, Chromogenic print; Image: 46.4 x 57.8 cm (18 1/ 4 x 22 3/ 4in.) Sheet: 50.5 x 60.6 cm (19 7/ 8 x 23 7/ 8in.) © The Allan Chasanoff, B. A. 1961, Photography Collection. Due to the penetrating shots, as can be seen here, symmetries occur on the centrefolds of the magazine. The hit rate seems to be rather coincidental, the violations of the images arbitrary. The holes are somehow closed, the surfaces smoothed by the photographs on the pierced pages. At the same time, Misrach ’ s pictures perpetuate the traces of the shots, turning them into a new picture that preserves and displays its own history of viewing. On Reproduction of the Photographic Document Even as a photograph of the original photograph of Olga Desmond - as we can see before us here, a digital reproduction of the archival document - these traces are still visible, but not tactile. Although, even at the archive, I am not permitted to touch the surfaces of the photographs - and even if I could, it would only be possible through the fabric of a glove - the materiality of the image-carrier is conveyed by my looking at the archival document. My gaze is a tentative gaze by me looking. By scrupulous handling of the object, inspection at close proximity and from various angles, I experience it in its medial and material quality. Looking through the holes leads to an uncertainty of seeing and the withdrawal of visible certainty. It seems as if I have crossed a boundary in which, as the art and media scholar Steffen Siegel emphasizes, “ the material conditions of the photographic approach the limits of the image ’ s resolution and go beyond means to establish the viewing of a picture as a passage of seeing ” . 10 In this passage of seeing, the gaze fluctuates between the photograph itself and what is photographed. This fluctuation of vision, achieved through the resolution of the picture, leads to the reassurance of recognizing and remembering what is shown: Such acts of revision are attempts to reverse the transgression of the internal boundary of resolution, at least temporarily. Photographs provoke a practice of seeing that leads from the certainty of a visual datum to the uncertainty of an amorphous form. 11 In the reproduction, printed in this article, the photograph appears as a more or less homogeneous surface. The bullet holes are closed. The passage of viewing takes place in the context of the medial transference in the analogue print-raster or the raster graphics of the digital picture. The materiality of the photographic document is thereby constantly overwritten by the medium of its reproduction - it preserves the traces of time to the same extent as it extinguishes them. Whereas for book publications holes, ruptures, and other traces in photographs are often retouched, they remain almost fully preserved in their original status and remain available to us on the websites of digital picture archives. However, we do not see the object itself but, as Gerlin, Holschbach and Löffler write in their introduction to the recently published book Bilder verteilen. 260 Isa Wortelkamp Fotografische Praktiken in der digitalen Kultur (Bielefeld 2018), “ only the visible surface of a complex framework of hardand software, of human and instrumental activities, of technological and economical imperatives ” . 12 The crucial difference to analogue photography lies not only in the technological change from grain to pixel, but also in the practices that have been evolving from their embedding in digital infrastructures which they, at the same time, help to shape. Nowadays, historiographic practice mostly has to deal with hybrid forms of photography: digitized analogue photographs. Digitization takes place mostly by applying scanning technologies, by means of which pictures are formatted using JPEG, TIFF or PNG files. Once digitized, we can neither turn them nor inspect them at close proximity. Although the zoom function of our computers allows us to enable infinite magnification, it nevertheless distances us from the image - literally dissolving into pixels the ‘ picture elements ’ , which transfer the photographic detail into the orthogonal order of quadrants. Digitization determines, in this manner, our habits of image viewing and also our access to and handling of the historical documents of photography representing a large portion of the visual culture of the 19 th and 20 th century. A specific historiographic practice is required by which a photographic document can be seen (and inspected) in all the respective medial and material terms and conditions of its appearance: be it as an analogue or digital reproduction on a book page, a picture on the computer screen, a projection, and so forth. From Review to Disturbance Those blind spots, visible as scratches, holes, or any trace of use or ageing that can be seen in photography and interrupt our gaze, remind us of the materiality of the photographic document. Thereby they ‘ disturb ’ an approach to and handling of photography, in which a non-disturbed view of and towards reality is claimed to be guaranteed. The idea of transparency of the photographic medium can be traced back to a photo-historical perspective of those concepts, according to which photography is understood primarily as a physiochemical effect of a material process that assumes the presence of the depicted object. 13 It is this tradition, in which Roland Barthes ’ s photo-theoretical consideration has to be seen as well, for which the art of photography lies in the idea of vanishing as a medium: Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible: it is not it what we see. In short, the referent adheres. And this singular adherence makes it very difficult to focus on Photography. 14 For Barthes, “ the windowpane and the landscape ” are inseparably interwoven in photography. With the scratches and stains, the glass itself becomes visible and the gaze begins to oscillate between looking through and looking at. They disturb the representation-orientated interpretation of photography, insofar as these disturbances keep it present (as a medium) within the photograph. Although Barthes employs terms of physical consequences showing on the surface of the photograph such as violation, stab, hole, or cut in his elaboration of punctum, he does not however, relate them to the materiality of photography. Even in his transference of this concept to the temporality of photography - which Barthes develops within the further progression of his photo-theoretical reflection - punctum stays related to “ its pure presentation ” : “ the lacerating emphasis of noeme ( ‘ that-has-been ’ ) ” . 15 But punctum, under- 261 Scratches, Holes, and Spots: Decay and Disappearance of Early Dance Photography stood as a violation of the surface of the photograph, would disrupt the logic of looking through a window and thereby suspend the idea of a transparent (and insofar vanished) medium: like a punctum within a punctum. The scratch or stain emphasizes photography within the photographed - to highlight photography ’ s status beyond its referential function as representation, as image-object. These traces can be taken as examples of those “ potential disturbances ” that Peter Geimer identifies when he challenges the established history of photographic images. For him, these disturbances are not a deficit, but represent a specific potential of photography insofar as they highlight its material conditionality in the photographic object as well as in its mediated representation. The familiar history of photography corresponds to a rather concealed history formations, stains and veils, that are being described as “ defects ” , “ parasites ” and “ enemies of the photographer ” in compendiums of the 19 th and 20 th century. 16 To integrate these “ potential disturbances ” into historiography - even into that of dance and theatre - implies regarding them as part of the photographic document that accredits this document in its specific conditionality and own rights, as an artefact, namely within the photographic object as well as in its media-historical mediation. Therein lies a consequence for the methodical handling of photography: The inestimable materiality of photography makes it necessary not only to take the finished product - the isolated, frozen image - but also to examine equally the process of its production: not only the visibility, but also the visualisation. 17 The conditions of visibility and visualisation shape - as could be shown by the description - the viewing of the photographs of Olga Desmond. In particular: its ‘ blind spots ’ invite us to highlight our approach to and handling of the historical document and to integrate this process into historiography. They serve as examples of an aesthetic of dance photography, reflected in their material and media properties, their not-infrequent appearance in series, albums, or postcards that suggest a specific point of view and use. In the context of dance academia, we often depend on the mediated appearance of dance photographs in projections or reproductions, or isolated from their publication contexts in boxes or folders of an archive, which in turn prescribes or denies a certain visibility. As damaged objects, they also point to the possible decay and disappearance of the photographic material, which either is or becomes inaccessible as a historiographical document. Their scratches, holes, and spots remind us of all that is unseen, stored in archives, retreating behind the universal visibility of infinitely reproducible pictures. Conclusion The broken series of Olga Desmond in the dance archive of Cologne can be seen as evidence that our view of dance photography is always informed by that which remains invisible, behind the picture, so to speak, and outside of its margins: the traces of its history, the disturbances of our gaze. I believe that it is precisely these ‘ blind spots ’ that call upon us to highlight the conditions and treatment of the historical document and to integrate them into historiography. In summary, the following clues can be derived for historiographic practice: (1) Beyond the secondary status of a photographic document, the media-specific aesthetic quality of dance photography no longer stands back 262 Isa Wortelkamp behind its mere referential function as representation, which inevitably has to fail in recording the moving nature of dance. (2) As a consequence, regarding the handling of a photographic document, the following can be suggested: firstly, to see it and make it visible within its respective appearance - its specific form and context; secondly, to even include (and print) those photographs that have fallen into oblivion or are in the process of being dissolved in our research and publications; thirdly, to identify and mark a digital reproduction of analogue photography as (a three-dimensional) object. (3) Finally, dance photography thus calls on historiography to reflect it as an aesthetic practice that makes and keeps the absent present: as scratches, holes and stains of our very own history. Notes 1 Tessa Jahn, Eike Wittrock and Isa Wortelkamp (eds.), Tanzfotografie. Historiografische Reflexionen der Moderne, Bielefeld 2015. 2 Gisela Barche and Claudia Jeschke, “ Bewegungsrausch und Formbestreben ” , in: Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller (ed.), Ausdruckstanz. Eine mitteleuropäische Bewegung der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, Wilhelmshaven 1992, pp. 317-346, here: p. 319. 3 Françoise Le Coz, “ Le Mouvement: Loïe Fuller, ” in: Photographies. Images de Danse. Loïe Fuller, Mary Wigman, Oskar Schlemmer, 7 (1985), pp. 56 - 63. 4 Peter Geimer, Bilder aus Versehen. Eine Geschichte fotografischer Erscheinungen, Hamburg 2010. 5 Christina Templin, Eine Skandalgeschichte des Nackten und Sexuellen im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890 - 1914, Bielefeld 2016, p. 132 - 133. 6 “ Im Kampf um die Schönheit I. Die Schönheit-Abende ” , in: Die Schönheit, Berlin, 6 (1908/ 09), pp. 265 - 278, here: p. 268. 7 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, Reflections on Photography, New York 1981, p. 9. 8 Ibid., p. 27. 9 Lars Nowak, “ Traces of Traces. On the Documentation of Military Landscapes by Four American Photographers: Richard Misrach, Jan Faul, Peter Goin, and David Hanson ” , in: places journal, https: / / placesjournal.org/ article/ traces-of-traces/ [accessed 1 June 2017]. 10 Steffen Siegel, “ Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst. Zur Auflösung des Bildes, ” in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Kunstwissenschaft, 58/ 2 (2013), pp. 177 - 202, here: p. 196. 11 Ibid. 12 Winfried Gerling, Susanne Holschbach and Petra Löffler, Bilder verteilen. Fotografische Praktiken in der digitalen Kultur, Bielefeld 2018, p. 8. 13 Geimer, Bilder aus Versehen. Geschichte fotografischer Erscheinungen, p. 22 f. 14 Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 6. 15 Ibid., p. 96. 16 Geimer, Bilder aus Versehen, p. 15. 17 Ibid. 263 Scratches, Holes, and Spots: Decay and Disappearance of Early Dance Photography