Repeat photography, post‐phenomenology and “being‐with” through the image (at the First World War cemeteries of Asiago, Italy)

The current elaboration of a post‐phenomenological geography is mostly a theoretical effort. This paper aims to contribute to this theoretical stance from a practical point of view by proposing a comparison between the technique of repeat photography and the trajectories along which the approach of post‐phenomenological geography has been outlined recently. From the engagement with a number of post‐phenomenological interventions and an empirical case study – namely, a repeat‐photography project conducted by the Italian amateur photographer Claudio Rigon at First World War cemetery sites on the Asiago Plateau in the Italian Pre‐Alpine region – the paper derives a conceptual development of this outline. Drawing from the theorisation of photographic indexicality and the role of subjects and objects in the photographic act, it is argued that repeat photography, more than other photographic genres, simultaneously entails the agency and displacement of the human. In fact, the compulsory nature and strict rules of repeat photography (same subject, same vantage point, same frame, same atmosphere) liberate the photographer from the self‐referential nature of creative photography and make room for other, non‐human agents to co‐determine the process and the final product. Repeat photography is envisioned here as a form of “being‐with” through the image, a way to be attuned to subjects, objects and spacetimes, which is not, or not solely, human‐centred, but can still convey an ethical aspect .