Still Supplementation: Stan Douglas's Cuba Photographs

Abstract

Focusing closely on the incorporation of photographs into Stan Douglas's media installations, this essay argues that the relationship between photography and film in his work is more complex than critics have acknowledged. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's concept of the ‘supplement’ as a necessary addition, both inside and outside specific forms, it contends that Douglas's use of photography is an integral part of his film works and installations and functions to foreground stillness as a theme. In doing so, the Cuba Photos undermine the seeming finality of still images and ironically reveal the end of faith in historical progress. While scholarship on circulation, following John Tagg's pioneering research, has emphasised Michel Foucault's concern with the historical construction of ideological meaning, the supplement in Douglas's work invites us to interrogate the very category of history by foregrounding the notion of re‐construction. Approaching the relationship between photography and film in terms of the supplement offers a provocative way of understanding the significance of photographic circulation.