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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2010
Philosophy of Photography - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2010
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2010
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Photography, landscape and the social production of space
By John RobertsThis article examines recent practices of landscape photography in light of Henri Lefebvre's influential theorisation of the production of space. The abiding value of Lefebvre's analysis for our understanding of social geography and contemporary Capitalism is elaborated through discussion of selected photographic works that, in different ways, each foreground the socio-hisotrically constructed character of space. This analysis enables the rearticulation of Lefebvre's influential analysis of space in light of later artistic practices and in relation to subsequent developments in the form of Capitalism.
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What is rhythm in relation to photography?
By Tim StephensThis article elaborates a theory of rhythm in relation to photography and, in particular, argues for the importance of rhythm in the theorization of photographic temporality. The approach taken breaks with a number of significant strands in contemporary photography theory, namely, Aristotelian-influenced modes of formalist criticism, dualistic formulations of representation and definitions of photographic temporality based on its difference to cinema. Through an interrogation of definitions of rhythm, the article examines, first, a formalist heritage from Aristotle to Lessing and evident in Greenberg that assumes a naturalistic definition of rhythm based on linearity, regularity and anthropomorphic essentialism. The second strand is described through Frye's anticipation of a different rhythm, lyricism, that problematically compounds the subject as an entity defined in a dualistic paradigm. Against this background the article elaborates the possibilities inherent in Deleuze's notion of crystal time a rhythm of energetic intensity not dependent on linear temporality or subjectivism as a further, more credible, theorization of rhythmic temporality-as-texture.
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No Credible Photographic Interest: Photography restrictions and surveillance in a time of terror
Authors: Daniel Palmer and Jessica WhyteThis article examines the consequences for the res publica of the simultaneous increase in state surveillance and the restriction of the right to take photographs in public ushered in by the War on Terror. We draw on Ariella Azoulay's theorization of what she terms the civil contract of photography, or the possibility for non-state civic interaction allowed by the invention of the camera. While Michel Foucault's studies of the role of constant surveillance in disciplinary societies help us to understand our increasingly panoptical public spaces, Azoulay also draws on Giorgio Agamben's theorization of the state of exception, which enables us to better understand the restriction of established rights, including the right to take photographs, in the post-9/11 context. The article asks whether these developments signify an attempt to monopolize the decision as to who constitutes the citizenry of photography, and also considers artistic and political responses to surveillance and photography restrictions in Australia and the United Kingdom.
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The image of, or in, sublation
By Ignaz CassarFollowing thinkers of the archive such as Derrida, Foucault and Groys, among others, one of the ethical functions of the archive is to enable differentiation: to do archival work is to unlock difference. Yet how is one to deem the archival content outside of those moments in which we deliberately engage with it? More specifically, how is one to think the spectatorial relation to images that, assigned to the sequestered space of the archive, remain most of the time without spectators?
In approaching the archival mode through the philosophical lens of sublation and its Hegelian precursor of Aufhebung that performs alteration through preservation-as-cancellation, this essay sets out to articulate a phenomenology of the archived photograph as an image of, or in, sublation. Exploring the fragile dynamics at stake between the archived and its non-archived outside, emphasis is laid on the critical contradictions inherent in the logics of archivization: seeking to preserve its documents, the archive cannot do so without also provoking further differentiation.
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Reviews
Authors: John Cunningham, Andrew Fisher and Katrina SluisMemorial to an Eternal Present?Toppled, Florian Gttke (2010), 1st ed., Rotterdam: Post editions, 150pp, ISBN: 9789460830167, paperback, 23.00
Time, Again, NowTime and Photography, Jan Baetens, Alexander Streitberger and Hilde Van Gelder (eds) (2010) Leuven: Leuven University Press, 187pp., ISBN 9789058677938, Paperback, 30.00
Words Without PicturesWords Without Pictures, Alex Klein (ed.) (2010), 1st Aperture Edition, New York: Aperture and LACMA, 510 pp., paperback ISBN 978-1-59711-142-3, 16.95
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Recent PhD Abstracts
Authors: Sheena Calvert and Nigel Green[Un]disciplined Gestures and [Un]common sense: The Sensual, Acoustic Logic[s] of Paradox and Art
Photography and the Representation of Modernist Architectural Space: From the Melancholy Fragment to the Colour of Utopia
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