ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 ‘Political Aesthetics’, works as a form of conclusion as it identifies directions of practice and pursues the potential of photography's political aesthetics. Two community environmental projects in Ecuador, and the theories of Jacques Rancière and Chantal Mouffe, introduce a broader framework with which to consider political aesthetics. With a starting premise that aesthetics and politics emerge in cultural production, they assume that art practice can contribute to promoting political change. The chapter differentiates between implicit and explicit strategies for political argument, and identifies a significant feature of recent practice – that the intention, content, and values of many projects do not differentiate between aesthetics and politics. Referring to spaces of shared learning, Kevin DeLuca's ‘image politics’, and forms of activism, it identifies photography as politically productive when positioned within political movements, and champions uses of photography that perform a political event, or that investigate and argue, or make deliberate use of presentation and public dissemination.
