ABSTRACT
The significance of the mobile phone as a tool for visual activism is well known. From political rallies to advocacy campaigns to environmental activism, the camera phone has been embraced by activists as a way to circulate images and amplify the effects of an action. Artists, likewise, have been drawn to the potential of using mobile photography as a tool for visual activism. In the process they often depart from a dominant earlier convention whereby an individual photographer sought to reveal a truth about the world, instead seeking to produce situations or performative events designed to facilitate the proliferation of photographs by many. This chapter explores some exemplary examples of this tactical use of mobile media, by artists such as Australian-born Chinese artist Michael Yuen, notably his 2008 work Follow in which he hired 50 people to follow him for a day as he went about his usual activities, and the Melbourne-based collective The Artists’ Committee, who makes collaborative public work “around the intersection of money, ethics and culture.” In order to address how such artists are using mobile media and what Ariella Azoulay calls the “citizenry of photography” for cultural activism, this chapter will provide an account of relevant histories of such social approaches to photography, as well as an overview of some of the key issues relating to collaborative photography as it relates to mobile media. Photography, it will be argued, has shifted from a documentary role to being co-constitutive of artistic activism.
