Citizens of Photography: The Camera and the Political Imagination
Citizens of Photography: The Camera and the Political Imagination
edited by Christopher Pinney, Naluwembe Binaisa, Vindhya Buthpitiya, Konstantinos Kalantzis, Ileana L. Selejan and Sokphea Young
Duke University Press, 2023
ISBNs
Cloth: 978-1-4780-2000-4
Paper: 978-1-4780-2076-9
eISBN: 978-1-4780-9361-9 (OA)
eISBN: 978-1-4780-2459-0 (standard)
About the Book
Citizens of Photography explores how photography offers access to forms of citizenship beyond those available through ordinary politics. Through contemporary ethnographic investigations of photographic practice in Nicaragua, Nigeria, Greece, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Cambodia, the PhotoDemos Collective traces the resonances between political representation and photographic representation. The authors emphasize photography as lived practice and how photography’s performative, transformative, and transgressive possibilities facilitate the articulation of new identities. They analyze photography ranging from family albums and social media to state and public archives, showing how it points to new destinations in the context of social movements, the aftermath of atrocity and civil war, and the legacies of past injustices. By foregrounding photography’s open-ended and contingent nature and its ability to subvert and reconfigure conventional political identifications, this volume demonstrates that as much as photography looks to the past, it points to the future, acting in advance of social reality.
About the Author
Christopher Pinney is Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London and author of The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages.
Naluwembe Binaisa researches mobilities, belonging, and citizenship within Africa.
Vindhya Buthpitiya is Associate Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.
Konstantinos Kalantzis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Thessaly.
Ileana L. Selejan is Lecturer in Art History, Culture, and Society at the University of Edinburgh.
Sokphea Young is an honorary Research Fellow at University College London.
Naluwembe Binaisa researches mobilities, belonging, and citizenship within Africa.
Vindhya Buthpitiya is Associate Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.
Konstantinos Kalantzis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Thessaly.
Ileana L. Selejan is Lecturer in Art History, Culture, and Society at the University of Edinburgh.
Sokphea Young is an honorary Research Fellow at University College London.
Reviews
-- Karen Strassler, author of Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia
“Ambitious in its theoretical and ethnographic reach, this vital volume robustly explores the unruly political potentialities of photography while laying out multiple directions for a future anthropology of photography. Citizens of Photography is a landmark book.”
-- Karen Strassler, author of Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia
"Citizens of Photography is a coherent whole. It is both a theoretical and participant-observational work in anthropology, and thankfully, the latter does not get trumped by the former. The volume would be accessible to a variety of disciplinary orientations, and the chapters work in tandem or for stand-alone use in undergraduate or graduate courses. In short, Citizens of Photography is a welcome addition to any cannon related to media, visual, or political anthropology."
-- Leighton C. Peterson Visual Communication Quarterly
-- Leighton C. Peterson Visual Communication Quarterly
"For the careful reader, untold stories of unknown photographers and cultural tropes emerge that reveal worlds of photographic and ethnographic practice from many countries often ignored by Anglo-American historians. How do other cultures use photography? This volume answers this question and analyzes the results. Recommended. General readers through faculty."
-- R. Hackemann Choice
-- R. Hackemann Choice
"Backed by rich ethnography, this volume demonstrates that . . . popular photography continues to hold as the ground of identification, narration, and imagination of possible futures."
-- Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil Journal of Anthropological Research
-- Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil Journal of Anthropological Research
"[Citizens of Photography] offers a thought-provoking and convincing argument for how everyday photographic practices utilized by 'the people' have profound political effects."
-- Maria Quinata Afterimage
-- Maria Quinata Afterimage
"Citizens of Photography offers a valuable contribution to the field of visual anthropology and photographic theory. It successfully moves the conversation from what photography represents to what it does in the world."
-- Kaitlyn E. Rich International Journal of Communication
-- Kaitlyn E. Rich International Journal of Communication
“The contribution that Citizens of Photography makes to the field of photography studies is nevertheless incredibly generative in the ways it provides, through fine-grained analysis, a series of object lessons for studying civic uses of photography in real time. . . . the book offers a grounded theory of photographic citizenship that is both predictive and retrospective.”
-- Gabrielle Moser History of Photography
-- Gabrielle Moser History of Photography
Tags
Political Imagination, Camera, Globalization, Photography, Political aspects, Cultural & Social, Social aspects, Anthropology, Political Science, Social Science, History
Open Access Information
Label: University College London
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
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