Abstract
This article addresses popular claims that photography has been “dematerialized” in the digital era. It engages a wide range of critical writings about photography from the early 19th to the 21st century to demonstrate that different versions of these claims have always formed an important part of photography criticism. However, rather than doing justice to photographs’ materiality or their complex entanglements with what has been considered material and immaterial, human and nonhuman, they have tended to somewhat limit our understanding of the medium’s material, sensory, and affective valences. This article argues that a sustained engagement between visual culture studies, sensory studies, and the new materialisms can help us understand more fully both analog and digital photography’s contingent position within the material world, varying sensory ideologies, and different subjectivities.
Works Cited
Azoulay, Ariella. The Civil Contract of Photography, Zone Books, 2008.Search in Google Scholar
Bal, Mieke. “Visual Essentialism and the Object of Visual Culture.” Journal of Visual Culture 2.1 (2003): 5–32. Print.10.1177/147041290300200101Search in Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. 1980, Vintage, 2000.Search in Google Scholar
Batchen, Geoffrey. Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography. 1997, MIT Press, 1999.Search in Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit.” 1936/1955. Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit: Drei Studien zur Kunstsoziologie, Suhrkamp, 1977, pp. 7–44.Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 28, no. 1, 2001, pp. 1–22.10.1086/449030Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Elspeth H., and Thy Phu, editors. Feeling Photography, Duke University Press, 2014.10.1515/9780822377313Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Elspeth H., and Thy Phu, editors. Introduction. Feeling Photography, edited by Elspeth H. Brown and Thy Phu, Duke University Press, 2014.10.1515/9780822377313Search in Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. “Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, Politics, and the Citizen.” Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 1, no. 3, 2002, pp. 325–40.10.1177/147041290200100305Search in Google Scholar
Burgin, Victor. Introduction. Thinking Photography, edited by Victor Burgin, Macmillan, 1982, pp. 1–14.10.1007/978-1-349-16716-6_1Search in Google Scholar
Campbell, David. “The Myth of Compassion Fatigue.” The Violence of the Image: Photography and International Conflict, edited by Liam Kennedy and Caitlin Patrick, I.B. Tauris, 2014, pp. 97–124. International Library of Visual Culture 15.Search in Google Scholar
Campt, Tina. Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe, Duke University Press, 2012.10.1515/9780822394457Search in Google Scholar
Classen, Constance. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures, Routledge, 1993.Search in Google Scholar
Coole, Diana, and Samantha Frost. “Introducing the New Materialisms.” New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, edited by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 1–43.10.1215/9780822392996-001Search in Google Scholar
Coole, Diana, and Samantha Frost., editors. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Duke University Press, 2010.10.2307/j.ctv11cw2wkSearch in Google Scholar
Cram, E., Melanie Loehwing, and John Louis Lucaites. “Protest Photography in a ‘Post-Occupy’ World: Keywords for a Digital Visual Rhetoric of Public Discourse.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, no. 23, 22 Nov. 2016, http://enculturation.net/protest-photography-in-a-post-occupy-world.Search in Google Scholar
Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. 1990. Rev. ed., MIT Press, 2005. October Books.Search in Google Scholar
Edwards, Elizabeth. “Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 41, 2012, pp. 221–34.10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145708Search in Google Scholar
Edwards, Elizabeth, and Janice Hart. “Introduction: Photographs as Objects.” Photographs Objects Histories, edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, Routledge, 2004, pp. 1–15. Material Cultures.10.4324/9780203506493Search in Google Scholar
Edwards, Elizabeth, and Janice Hart, editors. Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images. Routledge, 2004. Material Cultures.10.4324/9780203506493Search in Google Scholar
Fischer-Westhauser, Ulla, and Uwe Schögl. Editorial. Photoresearcher, vol. 19, 2013, p. 1.Search in Google Scholar
Fleetwood, Nicole R. “Posing in Prison: Family Photographs, Emotional Labor, and Carceral Intimacy.” Public Culture, vol. 27, no. 3, 2015, pp. 487–511.10.1215/08992363-2896195Search in Google Scholar
Fontcuberta, Joan, et al., editors. La condition post-photographique. Kerber, 2015. Kerber Photo Art.Search in Google Scholar
Friedman, May, and Silvia Schultermandl. Introduction. Click and Kin: Transnational Identity and Quick Media, edited by May Friedman and Silvia Schultermandl, University of Toronto Press, 2016, pp. 3–24.10.3138/9781487509972Search in Google Scholar
Gerling, Winfried, et al. Bilder verteilen: Fotografische Praktiken in der digitalen Kultur, Transcript, 2018. Digitale Gesellschaft 18.10.14361/9783839440704Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Vicki, editor. Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present. 1981, University of New Mexico Press, 1988.Search in Google Scholar
Gunning, Tom. “What’s the Point of an Index? or, Faking Photographs.” Nordicom Review, vol. 25, no. 1–2, 2004, pp. 39–49.10.1515/nor-2017-0268Search in Google Scholar
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph.” The Atlantic, 1 June 1859, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1859/06/the-stereoscope-and-the-stereograph/303361/.Search in Google Scholar
Howes, David. “Introduction: Empires of the Senses.” Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, edited by David Howes, Berg, 2005, pp. 1–17. Sensory Formations.Search in Google Scholar
Howes, David. “Introduction to Sensory Museology.” The Senses and Society, vol. 9, no. 3, 2015, pp. 259–67.10.2752/174589314X14023847039917Search in Google Scholar
James, Liz. “Senses and Sensibility in Byzantium.” Art History, vol. 27, no. 4, 2004, pp. 522–37.10.1111/j.0141-6790.2004.00436.xSearch in Google Scholar
Jay, Martin. “Scopic Regimes of Modernity.” Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster, Bay, 1988, pp. 3–23.Search in Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. “The Berlin Key or How to Do Words with Things.” 1993. Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, edited by Paul M. Graves-Brown, Routledge, 2000, 10–21.Search in Google Scholar
Linfield, Susie. The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence, University of Chicago Press, 2010.10.7208/chicago/9780226482521.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. 1962, University of Toronto Press, 2011.Search in Google Scholar
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. “Tactics of Appearance for Abolition Democracy #BlackLivesMatter.” Critical Inquiry, 2018, criticalinquiry. uchicago.edu /tactics_of_appearance/.Search in Google Scholar
Mitchell, William J. The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. MIT Press, 1992.Search in Google Scholar
Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, University of Minnesota Press, 2003.Search in Google Scholar
Ong, Walter J. “The Shifting Sensorium.” The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses, edited by David Howes, University of Toronto Press, 1991, pp. 25–30.Search in Google Scholar
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. 1982. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2012.Search in Google Scholar
Orvell, Miles. American Photography, Oxford University Press, 2003.Search in Google Scholar
Pink, Sarah. “Sensory Digital Photography: Re-Thinking ‘Moving’ and the Image.” Visual Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, 2011, pp. 4–13.10.1080/1472586X.2011.548484Search in Google Scholar
Ritchin, Fred. After Photography, Norton, 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Rose, Gillian, and Divya P. Tolia-Kelly. “Visuality/Materiality: Introducing a Manifesto for Practice.” Visuality/Materiality: Images, Objects and Practices, edited by Gillian Rose and Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, Routledge, 2012, pp. 1–11.Search in Google Scholar
Sassoon, Joanna. “Photographic Materiality in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” Photographs Objects Histories, edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, Routledge, 2010.Search in Google Scholar
Schrey, Dominik. Analoge Nostalgie in der digitalen Medienkultur, Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2017. Kaleidogramme 147.Search in Google Scholar
Sekula, Allan. “The Body and the Archive.” 1986. The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, edited by Richard Bolton, 4th pr., MIT Press, 1993, pp. 344–89.Search in Google Scholar
Seppänen, Janne. “Unruly Representation: Materiality, Indexicality and Agency of the Photographic Trace.” Photographies, vol. 10, no. 1, 2017, pp. 113–28.10.1080/17540763.2016.1258658Search in Google Scholar
Shore, Robert, editor. Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera, Laurence King, 2014.Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Mark M. Sensory History. Berg, 2007.10.5040/9781350048775Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Mark M. “Producing Sense, Consuming Sense, Making Sense: Perils and Prospects for Sensory History.” Journal of Social History, vol. 40, no. 4, Summer 2007, pp. 841–58.10.1353/jsh.2007.0116Search in Google Scholar
Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories, Macmillan, 1988. Communications and Culture.Search in Google Scholar
Weston, Edwards. “Daybooks, 1923–1930: An Excerpt.” Photography in Print, edited by Vicki Goldberg, University of New Mexico Press, 1988, pp. 303–14.Search in Google Scholar
Weston, Edwards. “Leaflet, Written for the Los Angeles Museum, 1934: An Excerpt.” Photography in Print, edited by Vicki Goldberg, University of New Mexico Press, 1988, pp. 315–18.Search in Google Scholar
Zylinska, Joanna. Nonhuman Photography, MIT Press, 2017.10.7551/mitpress/10938.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Katharina Fackler, published by De Gruyter Open
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License.
