ABSTRACT
Chapter 1, ‘Power Relations’, establishes the significance of photographing people, and the power relations that occur in the event of taking a photograph, which are phenomenological and ideological. The discussion of ‘looking’ indicates an underlying premise of the book that social and political structures cannot be separated from individual and collective experience, and that the politics of photography starts and ends with personal motivation and the broader frame of social investment. The chapter outlines post-structural critiques of representation and aspects of post-colonial thinking, feminism, and cultural politics, which have influenced attitudes to the depiction of individuals and peoples: references include Elizabeth Edwards, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, Edward Said, and Trinh T-Minha. ‘Power Relations’ features discussion of anthropological photography and a work by the Indigenous Australian photographer Destiny Deacon that counters this tradition. It establishes differences between people as a central issue, and the experience of looking at photographs as a form of matrix involving the photographer, the subject of the photograph, and the viewer.
