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Citizens of Photography

The Camera and the Political Imagination

Citizens of Photography cover image Read the Introduction

Book

Pages: 368

Illustrations: 156 color illustrations

Published: September 2023

Editors: Christopher Pinney, PhotoDemos Collective, Naluwembe Binaisa, Vindhya Buthpitiya, Konstantinos Kalantzis, Ileana L. Selejan, Sokphea Young

Contributors: Naluwembe Binaisa, Vindhya Buthpitiya, Konstantinos Kalantzis, Ileana L. Selejan, Sokphea Young

Citizens of Photography explores how photography offers access to forms of citizenship beyond those available through ordinary politics. Through contemporary ethnographic investigations of photographic practice in Nicaragua, Nigeria, Greece, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Cambodia, the PhotoDemos Collective traces the resonances between political representation and photographic representation. The authors emphasize photography as lived practice and how photography’s performative, transformative, and transgressive possibilities facilitate the articulation of new identities. They analyze photography ranging from family albums and social media to state and public archives, showing how it points to new destinations in the context of social movements, the aftermath of atrocity and civil war, and the legacies of past injustices. By foregrounding photography’s open-ended and contingent nature and its ability to subvert and reconfigure conventional political identifications, this volume demonstrates that as much as photography looks to the past, it points to the future, acting in advance of social reality.

Praise

“Ambitious in its theoretical and ethnographic reach, this vital volume robustly explores the unruly political potentialities of photography while laying out multiple directions for a future anthropology of photography. Citizens of Photography is a landmark book.” - Karen Strassler, author of Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia

"The book is well-produced in a sturdy, softcover format containing high-quality color reproductions of photo illustrations, consisting mainly of images from social media, government archives, and family albums. The audience for this collection is decidedly scholarly and aimed at those with a preexisting interest and/or experience in anthropology, ethnography, or photography. Highly recommended as an addition to any art library’s photography collection, this book would be ideally suited to a scholarly environment in dialogue with works by prominent photo historians." - Kate Kaluzny, ARLIS/NA

"Citizens of Photography is a coherent whole. It is both a theoretical and participant-observational work in anthropology, and thankfully, the latter does not get trumped by the former. The volume would be accessible to a variety of disciplinary orientations, and the chapters work in tandem or for stand-alone use in undergraduate or graduate courses. In short, Citizens of Photography is a welcome addition to any cannon related to media, visual, or political anthropology." - Leighton C. Peterson, Visual Communication Quarterly

"For the careful reader, untold stories of unknown photographers and cultural tropes emerge that reveal worlds of photographic and ethnographic practice from many countries often ignored by Anglo-American historians. How do other cultures use photography? This volume answers this question and analyzes the results. Recommended. General readers through faculty." - R. Hackemann, Choice

"Backed by rich ethnography, this volume demonstrates that . . . popular photography continues to hold as the ground of identification, narration, and imagination of possible futures." - Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil, Journal of Anthropological Research

"[Citizens of Photography] offers a thought-provoking and convincing argument for how everyday photographic practices utilized by 'the people' have profound political effects." - Maria Quinata, Afterimage

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information Funding Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Christopher Pinney is Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London and author of The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages.

Naluwembe Binaisa researches mobilities, belonging, and citizenship within Africa.

Vindhya Buthpitiya is Associate Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.

Konstantinos Kalantzis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Thessaly.

Ileana L. Selejan is Lecturer in Art History, Culture, and Society at the University of Edinburgh.

Sokphea Young is an honorary Research Fellow at University College London.

Table Of Contents

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Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction. Photographing; or, the Future of the Image / Christopher Pinney  1
1. “The Truth Is in the Soil”—The Political Work of Photography in Northern Sri Lanka / Vidhya Buthpitiya  63
2. Visual Citizenship in Cambodia—From Apocalypse to Visual “Political Emancipation” / Sokphea Young  111
3. Photography, Citizenship, and Accusatory Memory in the Greek Crisis / Konstantinos Kalantzis  150
4. Insurgent Archive—The Photographic Making and Unmaking of the Nicaraguan Revolutionary State / Ileana L. Selejan  192
5. “We Are Moving with Technology”—Photographing Voice and Belonging in Nigeria / Naluwembe Binaisa  234
6. Citizenship, Contingency, and Futurity—Photographic Ethnographies from Nepal, India, and Bangladesh / Christopher Pinney  273
Bibliography  319
Contributors  337
Index  339

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Additional Information

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Related Links Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-2076-9 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-2000-4 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-2459-0 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478024590

Funding Information

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This book is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 695283).