A new, revolutionary history of photography from a stellar team of writers and thinkers that challenges all existing narratives by focusing on the complex collaborations between photographer and subject. Led by five of the great thinkers and practitioners in photography, and including texts by over 100 writers, critics and academics, this groundbreaking publication presents a potential history of photography explored through the lens of collaboration, challenging the dominant narratives around photographic history and authorship. With more than 1,000 photographs, it breaks apart photography’s ‘single creator’ tradition by bringing to light tangible traces of collaboration – the various relationships, exchanges and interactions that occur between all participants in the making of any photograph. This collaboration takes different forms, including coercion and cooperation, friendship and exploitation, and expresses shared interests as well as competition, rivalry or antagonistic partnership. The conditions of collaboration are explored through 100 photography ‘projects’, divided into eight thematic chapters including ‘The Photographed Subject’, ‘The Author’ and ‘Potentializing Violence’. The result of years of research, Collaboration addresses key issues of gender, race and societal hierarchies and divisions and their role in forging identity and conformity. The photographs from each project are presented non-hierarchically alongside quotes, testimonies, and short texts by guest contributors. These networks of texts and images offer perspectives on a vast array of photographic themes, from Araki’s portraits of women to archival files from the Spanish Civil War. Each chapter is introduced by the editors, who provide the keys to understanding and decoding the complex politics of seeing.

In 1990, a year before the Zapatistas' armed revolt, Wendy Ewald was invited to conduct photography classes for Mayan, Ladino, and Tzotzil children living in Chiapas, the southernmost province of Mexico. The sponsoring organization was the Mayan writers' cooperative, Sna Jtz-ibajom (The House of the Writers). While cameras and camcorders were hardly novelties in Chiapas, they were generally used by tourists whose picture-taking reinforced their own cultural biases. Ewald did not take pictures; instead she guided her students in taking their own pictures of their daily lives, dreams, desires, and fantasies. These briefs resonated with the importances held by dreams in Mayan culture, which considers them as real as waking life. The resulting project, The Devil is leaving his Cave, is a unique insight into the everyday realities of life in Mayan communities just before the devastation of the Zapatista uprising. This book brings together Ewald's original project with new work made in collaboration with fifteen young Mexican Americans living in Chicago, coordinated with the help of Centro Romero, an immigrant service organisation. These images respond to many of the same subjects as those by Ewald's 1990s students, with an emphasis now on capturing inner lives and dreams as a way of reckoning with the unvoiced experiences of immigration. The themes of restriction and self-reflection that emerged from this new work were intensified by being made in part under COVID lockdown. Together, the Chiapas and Chicago projects trace the differences between growing up in different Mexican geographies with diverse histories, while holding on to the universal joys and sorrows of childhood.

In a unique collaboration with photographer and educator Wendy Ewald, eighteen immigrant teenagers create an alphabet defining their experiences in pictures and words. Wendy helped the teenagers pose for and design the photographs, interviewing them along the way about their own journeys and perspectives. America Border Culture Dreamer presents Wendy and the students' poignant and powerful images and definitions along with their personal stories of change, hardship, and hope. Created in a collaboration with Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, this book casts a new light on the crucial, under-heard voices of teenage immigrants themselves, making a vital contribution to the timely national conversation about immigration in America.

Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods brings together visual studies and childhood studies to explore images of childhood in the study of rurality and rural life. The volume highlights how the voices of children themselves remain central to investigations of rural childhoods. Contributions look at representations and experiences of rural childhoods from both the Global North and Global South (including U.S., Canada, Haiti, India, Sweden, Slovenia, South Africa, Russia, Timor-Leste, and Colombia) and consider visuals ranging from picture books to cell phone video to television.

"Ewald"s project is wonderful because it lets kids speak for themselves; instead of being passive subjects for the lens, they eagerly harness it to
the engines of their imaginations."
--Andy Grundberg, The New York Times
Written for parents and teachers, I Wanna Take Me a Picture is filled with anecdotes about Ewald"s work that makes it an accessible and practical guide to getting children involved in photography. Striking photographs of children"s work show the benefits of her program.
"Young people know joy, sorrow, and loss. By looking at their photographs and talking about making them, they begin to realize their lives have importance. This book is needed!"
--Deborah Willis, author of Reflections in Black
"A treasure of photos taken by the author and her pupils, plus stirring testimonies from children around the globe who faced tragedy through the lens of a camera."
--City Limits
Wendy Ewald, who lives with her husband and son in Red Hook, New York, is currently a fellow at the Center for Documentary Studies in Durham, North Carolina. Alexandra Lightfoot received her Ed.D. from Harvard University in 1998.

This practical guide will help teachers to use the acclaimed ''Literacy Through Photography'' method developed by Wendy Ewald to promote critical thinking, self-expression, and respect in the classroom. The authors share their perspectives as an artist, a sociologist, and a teacher to show educators how to integrate four new ''Literacy Through Photography'' projects into the curriculum--The Best Part of Me, Black Self/White Self, American Alphabets, and Memories from Past Centuries. These field-tested projects invite students to create images representing their understanding of themselves and the world around them. The text includes classroom vignettes, project descriptions and lesson plans, and reflections and resources to help teachers explore important social and political topics with their students while also addressing standards across various disciplines and grade levels.

This practical guide will help teachers to use the acclaimed ''Literacy Through Photography'' method developed by Wendy Ewald to promote critical thinking, self-expression, and respect in the classroom. The authors share their perspectives as an artist, a sociologist, and a teacher to show educators how to integrate four new ''Literacy Through Photography'' projects into the curriculum--The Best Part of Me, Black Self/White Self, American Alphabets, and Memories from Past Centuries. These field-tested projects invite students to create images representing their understanding of themselves and the world around them. The text includes classroom vignettes, project descriptions and lesson plans, and reflections and resources to help teachers explore important social and political topics with their students while also addressing standards across various disciplines and grade levels.

This unique book of photographs and text takes place in the 2000-year-old village of Vichya in the desert of Gujarati, India. There, photographer and teacher Wendy Ewald lived and taught twenty of the village's children, ages ten to fourteen years, the art and craft of photography. Whether they attend school or work the fields, whether they are untouchables or of another caste, the children speak chillingly of their concern over their impending marriages and stories of bride-burning, of their hopes and dreams, and of their almost unanimous desire to photograph the gods. The children's pictures and oral histories are joined with Ewald's evocative observations and images of the town and its people.