ABSTRACT
Chapter 6, ‘Citizen Relations’, revisits the ‘event’ of photographing people with a focus on circumstances in the Middle East. Updating post-structural critiques of representation with Ariella Azoulay's ‘civil imagination’ and Judith Butler's call to expose the ‘frame’, the chapter discusses questions relating to refugee status, human rights, and agency. Discussing projects by, for example, Christine Meisner and Sharon Sliwinski, it reassesses the nature of spectatorship and the interpretative effort required to understand history and situation. Awareness of shared citizenship has prompted the development of compensatory strategies that challenge mainstream photojournalism, such as those by Geert Van Kesteren and Tobias Zielony. Influences such as citizen journalism, slow journalism, and research collaboration have contributed to the development of participatory documentations of community experience: works by Anne Paq and ActiveStills are significant for their involvement with people over long periods of time and for assuming a practical activist position. The chapter establishes an active engagement with photography as a form of protest.
