Jonathan James Long - Photography: theoretical snapshots

Photography

Over the past 25 years, photography has moved to centre stage in the study of visual cultureand has established itself in numerous disciplines.This trend has brought with it a diversifica-tion in approaches to the study of the photographic image. Photography:Theoretical Snapshots offers exciting perspectives on photography theory todayfrom some of the worlds leading critics and theorists. It introduces new means of looking atphotographs, with topics including:

a community-based understanding of Spencer Tunicks controversial installationsthe tactile and auditory dimensions of photographic viewingsnapshot photographyand the use of photography in human rights discourse.

Photography:Theoretical Snapshots also addresses the question of photography history, revisitingthe work of some of the most influential theorists such as Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin,and the October group, re-evaluating the neglected genre of the carte-de-visite photograph, andaddressing photographys wider role within the ideologies of modernity. The collection openswith an introduction by the editors, analysing the trajectory of photography studies and theoryover the past three decades and the ways in which the discipline has been constituted.Ranging from the most personal to the most dehumanized uses of photography, from thenineteenth century to the present day, from Latin America to Northern Europe, Photography:Theoretical Snapshots will be of value to all those interested in photography, visual culture andcultural history.

J. J. Long is Professor of German at Durham University. He is the author of The Novels ofThomas Bernhard and of W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity and has published widely onGerman literature and photography. He was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2005.

Andrea Noble is Professor of Latin American Studies at Durham University, author of Mexican National Cinema and co-editor of Phototextualities: Intersections of Photography andNarrative .

Edward Welch is Senior Lecturer in French at Durham University, and author of FranoisMauriac: The Making of an Intellectual . His research interests include post-war French visualculture and documentary photography and he is a regular contributor to Source photographyjournal.

Photography

Theoretical snapshots

Edited by J. J. Long,Andrea Nobleand Edward Welch

First published 2009by Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 200 9 .

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Editorial selection and material 2009 J. J. Long, Andrea Nobleand Edward Welch.

Individual chapters 2009 the contributors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted orreproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, orother means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopyingand recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, withoutpermission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Photography : theoretical snapshots / edited by J.J. Long, Andrea Noble,and Edward Welch. 1st ed.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.1. PhotographyPhilosophy. 2. Images, Photographic. I.Long, J. J. (Jonathan James), 1969 II. Noble, Andrea. III.Welch, Edward, 1973TR183.P4985 2008770.1dc22 2008028835

ISBN 0-203-86903-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-47706-9 (hbk)ISBN10: 0-415-47707-7 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-47706-2 (hbk)ISBN13: 978-0-415-47707-9 (pbk)

Contents

List of figuresAbout the contributorsAcknowledgements

Introduction: a small history of photography studies

EDWARD WELCH AND J. J. LONG

viiviiixi

Mindless photography

JOHN TAGG

Thinking photography beyond the visual?

ELIZABETH EDWARDS

On snapshot photography: rethinking photographic power inpublic and private spheres

CATHERINE ZUROMSKIS

Family photography and the global drama of human rights

ANDREA NOBLE

Dreams of ordinary life: cartes-de-visite and the bourgeois imagination 80

GEOFFREY BATCHEN

Race and reproduction in Camera Lucida

SHAWN MICHELLE SMITH

Benjamin, Atget and the readymade politics of postmodernphotography studies

KELLY DENNIS

vi

Contents

Being exposed: thinking photography and community in SpencerTunicks naked world through the lens of Jean-Luc Nancy

LOUIS KAPLAN

Platos dilemma: And in this fairy world of labour see / A type ofwhat the actual world should be

DONALD PREZIOSI

BibliographyIndex

159173

Figures

1.1 Cover of London Congestion Charging Technology Trials, Stage 1 Report .1.2 Taurus 13CO 7 June 2005. Radio telescope image of solar dustcloud radiation from the Taurus Molecular Cloud Survey.1.3 Look In Her Eyes.2.1 Roslyn Poignant, Frank Gurrmanamana sings one of a series ofJambich manikay songs.3.1 Army Specialists Charles Graner, Jr. and Sabrina Harman posingwith prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.3.2 The author and her father, c. 1973.3.3 Advertisement for the Cine-Kodak Royal Magazine Camera.3.4 The author with friends at Taughannock Falls, near Ithaca, NY,summer 2004.4.1 Tarnopolsky, with the leader of the Abuelas, Estela Carlotto, showsphotos of his parents.4.2 Screen grab, Mexico dirty war crimes alleged.5.1 Bingham (Paris), Portrait of a standing man, c. 1865.5.2 Disdri (Paris), Portrait of Emperor Napolon III, c. 1860.5.3 J.C. Moutton (Fitchburg, MA, USA), Portrait of a seated womanholding an open carte-de-visite album, c. 1865.

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Contributors

Geoffrey Batchen is a Professor in Art History at The Graduate Center ofthe City University of New York. His most recent books include ForgetMe Not: Photography and Remembrance (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004)and William Henry Fox Talbot (Phaidon, 2008). He is currently editing ananthology of essays about Camera Lucida titled Photography Degree Zero (tobe published in 2009 by The MIT Press).

Kelly Dennis teaches modern and contemporary art and photography atthe University of Connecticut, Storrs. Her work on photography, porno-graphy and performance art have been published in Art Journal , Historyof Photography , Analecta Husserliana and Strategies , as well as in numerousanthologies. Her books include Art/Porn: A History of Seeing and Touching (Berg Publishers, 2009) and an edited volume, Defining the Digital Canon .

Elizabeth Edwards is Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Universityof the Arts London. Originally trained as an historian, she has writtenextensively about the relationship between photography and history, espe-cially in cross-cultural contexts. She edited Anthropology and Photography 1865-1920 (Yale,1992); her most recent books are Raw Histories: PhotographsAnthropology and Museums (Berg, 2001), an edited volume PhotographsObjects Histories: On the Materiality of Images (Routledge, 2004, with JaniceHart), and a further volume on material culture and the senses, SensibleObjects (Berg, 2005, with Chris Gosden and Ruth Philips). She is currentlyworking on a book on the relationship between photography, collectivememory and Englishness between 1890 and 1914.