Choice Reviews Online· 2013
Civil imagination: a political ontology of photography
- 507citations
- 2013year
Short summary
Photography should be understood as an event and encounter, not just an end product, shifting focus to the practice of image production to reveal how photos reinforce or resist power, according to Ariella Azoulay's "Civil Imagination."
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Photography is redefined as an event and encounter, not solely an end product.
- Focus shifts from authorship/intention to what is visible and the potential for imagination.
- Photographs from occupied territories are analyzed for their role in recognizing or denying the Palestinian disaster.
- The book argues photography can be a civic practice to reclaim power for critique and resistance.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Photography, writes Ariella Azoulay in Civil Imagination, is an event and an encounter, irreducible to its end product: the photograph. This shift in focus to the practice of producing photographs (the Copernican Revolution in studying photography) brings to light how images can both reinforce and resist power regimes. Azoulay engages with Arendt and Benjamin, arguing that art-world concerns regarding authorship, intention and frameworks should be replaced with a discussion of what can be seen, and where the imagination can break through political boundaries. Showing how photographs from the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank recognize or deny the Palestinian disaster, Azoulay reconstructs the narrative of the responsible, ruling regime - and in so doing, also demonstrates how its power can be renegotiated through acts of imagining. Packaged beautifully with many color photographs, Civil Imagination is a provocative argument for photography as a civic practice, capable of reclaiming power for the purposes of critique, freedom and resistance.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Choice Reviews Online, 2013 · DOI ↗
Continue with a free account
Ask the paper: 3 free questions a day about this paper; save it, get its citation, new summaries every day for your field. Takeaways are Premium.
Continue free on the webSign in with Google or Apple; no card needed. You come back to this paper.
On your phone:
Field: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Visual Arts and Performing ArtsArts and Humanities