![]() |
![]() |
Your cart is empty |
||
Showing 1 - 7 of 7 matches in All Departments
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.
The anthropology of art is currently at a crossroads. Although well
versed in the meaning of art in small-scale tribal societies,
anthropologists are still wrestling with the question of how to
interpret art in a complex, post-colonial environment. Alfred Gell
recently confronted this problem in his posthumous book Art and
Agency. The central thesis of his study was that art objects could
be seen, not as bearers of meaning or aesthetic value, but as forms
mediating social action. At a stroke, Gell provocatively dismissed
many longstanding but tired questions of definition and issues of
aesthetic value. His book proposed a novel perspective on the roles
of art in political practice and made fresh links between analyses
of style, tradition and society.
The anthropology of art is currently at a crossroads. Although well
versed in the meaning of art in small-scale tribal societies,
anthropologists are still wrestling with the question of how to
interpret art in a complex, post-colonial environment. Alfred Gell
recently confronted this problem in his posthumous book Art and
Agency. The central thesis of his study was that art objects could
be seen, not as bearers of meaning or aesthetic value, but as forms
mediating social action. At a stroke, Gell provocatively dismissed
many longstanding but tired questions of definition and issues of
aesthetic value. His book proposed a novel perspective on the roles
of art in political practice and made fresh links between analyses
of style, tradition and society.
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.
Moving the critical debate about photography away from its current Euro-American center of gravity, "Photography's Other Histories" breaks with the notion that photographic history is best seen as the explosion of a Western technology advanced by the work of singular individuals. This collection presents a radically different account, describing photography as a globally disseminated and locally appropriated medium. Essays firmly grounded in photographic practice--in the actual making of pictures--suggest the extraordinary diversity of nonwestern photography. Richly illustrated with over 100 images, "Photography's Other
Histories" explores from a variety of regional, cultural, and
historical perspectives the role of photography in raising
historical consciousness. It includes two first-person pieces by
indigenous Australians and one by a Seminole/Muskogee/Dine' artist.
Some of the essays analyze representations of colonial
subjects--from the limited ways Westerners have depicted Navajos to
Japanese photos recording the occupation of Manchuria to the
changing "contract" between Aboriginal subjects and photographers.
Other essays highlight the visionary quality of much popular
photography. Case studies centered in early-twentieth-century Peru
and contemporary India, Kenya, and Nigeria chronicle the diverse
practices that have flourished in postcolonial societies.
"Photography's Other Histories" recasts popular photography around
the world, as not simply reproducing culture but creating it.
Photography and anthropology share strikingly parallel histories. Christopher Pinney's provocative and eminently readable account provides a polemical narrative of anthropologists' use of photography from the 1840s to the present. Walter Benjamin suggested that photography 'make[s] the difference between technology and magic visible as a thoroughly historical variable,' and Pinney here explores photography as a divinatory practice. Though viewed as modern and rational, this quality of photography in fact propelled anthropologists towards the 'primitive' lives of those they studied. Early anthropology celebrated photography as a physical record, whose authority and permanence promised an escape from the lack of certainty in speech. For later anthropologists, this same quality became grounds to critique an imaging practice that failed to capture movement and process. But throughout these twists and turns, anthropology as a practice of 'being there' has found itself entwined in an intimate engagement with photography as metaphor for the collection of evidence. Photography and Anthropology reveals how anthropology provides the tools to re-imagine the power and magic of all photographic practices. It presents both a history of anthropology's seduction by photography and the anthropological theory of photography. This thoroughly researched book draws upon an intimate knowledge of the history of anthropology, photography and the world's major anthropological practitioners.
Mass-produced images have long been produced and used in India by
religious and nationalist movements - the emergence of Indian-run
chromolithograph presses in the late 1870s initiated a vast
outpouring that have come to dominate many of India's public and
domestic spaces.
|
![]() ![]() You may like...
|