ABSTRACT
It is a truism that meaning of a photograph is dependent on its contextualizing discourses. Starting with an account of why photography is generally assumed to be an art of individuals, the author aim has been to rethink this idea through an expanded sense of what authorship and collaboration means in relation to the photograph. His purpose is not to argue that collaborative modes of photographic practice are superior. As some have found to their cost-when family snapshots of children turn up on pedophile sites, or "sexting" goes wrong-the sharing of personal photographs online makes it extremely difficult to maintain control over their access and use. Artists working with photography can help the reader to understand how photography functions in the world more broadly, pinpointing the exigencies of the present and anticipating futures to come. Perhaps it has taken the fluid forms of authorship mobilized by digital photography to cast light on collaborative prehistories that this book begins to describe.
