Reworking or Making Up? A note on photonovels in Costello’s approach of medium theory

Diarmuid Costello makes an interesting case against Rosalind Krauss’s reading (and, according to him, misreading) of Stanley Cavell’s ideas on medium-specificity and innovation (Diarmuid Costello, “Automat, Automatic, Automatism: Rosalind Krauss and Stanley Cavell on Photography and Photographically Dependent Arts”, Critical Inquiry 39 [Summer 2012]: 819-54). Costello’s point would have been even more forceful however if he had challenged Krauss’s analysis of the work that has played such a dramatic role in her own reflection on medium theory: James Coleman’s reworking of the popular Italian photo novel, a formula medium that he reinvents by combining it with the equally outdated format of the slide show.