Book Description

At a critical point in the development of photography, this book offers an engaging, detailed and far-reaching examination of the key issues that are defining contemporary photographic culture. Photography Reframed addresses the impact of radical technological, social and political change across a diverse set of photographic territories: the ontology of photography; the impact of mass photographic practice; the public display of intimate life; the current state of documentary, and the political possibilities of photographic culture. These lively, accessible essays by some of the best writers in photography together go deep into the most up-to-date frameworks for analysing and understanding photographic culture and shedding light on its histories. Photography Reframed is a vital road map for anyone interested in what photography has been, what it has become, and where it is going.

Table of Contents

Photography Reframed: Always, Already, Again: Ben Burbridge & Annebella Pollen

Section I. New Ontologies: Photography between the Archive and the Network

• Technology and Interaction: Penelope Umbrico’s TVs from Craigslist: Duncan Wooldridge
• Post-representational Photography, or the Grin of Schrödinger’s Cat: Daniel Rubinstein
• Archival Measures: Photography Collections in a New Media Age: Tina Di Carlo
• The Grain of Ephemera / Event: Thinking Digital Archive through Photography: Sen Uesaki & Jelena Stojkovic
• Tomorrow’s Headlines Are Today’s Fish and Chip Papers: Some Thoughts on ‘Response-ability’: David Campany interviewed by Duncan Wooldridge

Section II. Mass Culture and the Politics of Distinction

• Popular Photographic Cultures in Photography Studies: Gil Pasternak
• The Photographer as Reader: The Aspirational Amateur in the Photo-Magazines: Peter Buse
• Mrs Wagner’s Aspirations: The Album as Monument: Martha Langford
• When is a Cliché not a Cliché?: Reconsidering Mass-produced Sunsets: Annebella Pollen

Section III. (Networked) Society and the Spectacle: Photography and Exhibitionism

• The Shirt Off His Back: Male Torsos on Display in Contemporary Visual Culture: Marvin Heiferman
• The Politics of Amateurism in Online Pornography: Feona Attwood
• What a Body Can Do: From the Frenzy of the Communicative to the Visual Bond: Francis Summers
• Hating Habermas: On Exhibitionism, Shame and Life on the Actually Existing Internet: Theresa M. Senft
• Paradise Lost: Exhibitionism and the Work of Nan Goldin: Ben Burbridge

Section IV. Documentary Photography and Global Crisis

• The Déjà Vu of September 11: An Essay on Inter-iconicity: Clément Chéroux
• Facing War: Photography and Humanism: Iain Boal & Julian Stallabrass
• War Primers: David Evans
• Immigration Photography in Italy: Andrea Pogliano
• Landscape Photography’s ‘New Humanism’: Chad Elias

Section V. Citizens? Photography, Resistance and Control

• Dead End Streets: Photography, Protest and Social Control: David Hoffman
• Escaping the Panopticon: Pauline Hadaway
• You Don’t Even Represent Us’: Picturing the Moscow Protests: Aglaya Glebova
• Occupy the Image: Liam Devlin
• The Becoming-Photographer in Technoculture: Sarah Kember

Closing Reflections: Ronnie Close, Catherine Grant, Sarah E. James and Sandra Plummer

Afterword: Charlotte Cotton

About the Authors

Ben Burbridge is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Co-Director of the Centre for Photography and Visual Culture at the University of Sussex. He is widely published in the field of photography, art and politics. Curatorial projects include the 2012 Brighton Photo Biennial, Agents of Change: Photography and the Politics of Space and Revelations: Experiments in Photography (Science Museum, London and National Media Museum, Bradford, 2015).

Annebella Pollen is Principal Lecturer and Academic Programme Leader in the History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton. She is widely published in the field of visual and material culture. She is the author of The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians (2015), Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life (I.B.Tauris, 2016) and co-editor of Dress History: New Directions in Theory and Practice (2015).