ABSTRACT

This edited collection explores the complex ways in which photography is used and interpreted: as a record of evidence, as a form of communication, as a means of social and political provocation, as a mode of surveillance, as a narrative of the self, and as an art form. What makes photographic images unsettling and how do the re-uses and interpretations of photographic images unsettle the self-evident reality of the visual field? Taking up these themes, this book examines the role of photography as a revelatory medium underscored by its complex association with history, memory, experience and identity.

chapter |9 pages

Photography and Ontology

An Introduction

chapter |14 pages

Ontology or Metaphor?

chapter |17 pages

Unsettling the Archive

The Stasi, Photography, and Escape from the GDR

chapter |15 pages

Dark Archive

The Afterlife of Forensic Photographs 1

chapter |16 pages

Hard Looks

Faces, Bodies, Lives in Early Sydney Police Portrait Photography

chapter |15 pages

Anticipatory Photographs

Sarah Pickering and An-My Lê

chapter |17 pages

Eli Lotar’s Para-urban Visions

chapter |15 pages

The Presence of Video

Making the Displaced and Disappeared Self Visible

chapter |13 pages

Contemplating Life

Rinko Kawauchi’s Autobiography of Seeing

chapter |12 pages

Suspending Productive Time

Some Photographs by Gabriel Orozco and Jacques Ranciè re’s Thinking of Modern Aesthetics

chapter |22 pages

Photography as Indexical Data

Hans Eijkelboom and Pattern Recognition Algorithms

chapter |12 pages

Afterword

Photography Against Ontology