Skip to content
1981
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Philosophy of Photography
  4. Previous Issues
  5. Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023

Philosophy of Photography - Violence, Part 2, Apr 2023

Violence, Part 2

Violence, Part 2, Apr 2023

Language: English
  • Interview

      • The visual terms of state violence in Israel/Palestine: An interview with Rebecca L. Stein

        https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00068_7

        This interview with media anthropologist, Rebecca L. Stein, conducted by Noa Levin and Andrew Fisher in Spring 2023, takes her recent book (2021) as its starting point in order to explore issues of state violence and the militarization of social media in Israel/Palestine. This book marks the culmination of a decade-long research project into the camera dreams introduced by digital imaging technologies and the fraught histories of their disillusionment. Stein discusses the way her research has critically conceptualized the recent history of hopes invested in the digital image in this geopolitical context, by the occupier as much as the occupied, and charts the failures and mistakes, obstructions and appropriations that characterize the conflicted visual cultures of Israel/Palestine.

  • Articles

      • The pencil of cheap nature: Towards an environmental history of photography

        https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00069_1

        This article sets out to draft a preliminary sketch of an environmental history of photography, as opposed to a history of environmental photography. It shows that such a history should be rooted in a conceptualization of our geological epoch as the Capitalocene: the age of capital. Seen in this light, photography can be understood as part of a longer history of what the article describes – building on the work of activist and journalist Raj Patel and environmental historian Jason W. Moore (2018) – as the ‘cheap image’. In this way, photography is shown to offer a succinct expression of the Cartesian dualism that Patel and Moore see as being at the heart of the Capitalocene: the externalized image of capital N nature that this world ecology necessitated. The article considers (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, 2022) a recent exhibition and catalogue that attempted to narrate in exhibition form a history of photography from such a perspective. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of the work of several artists from this exhibition who are seen as exemplifying ‘metabolic realism’, a new critical photo-based artistic approach.

    • Adventure in times of terror

      https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00070_1

      This article follows the history of the idea of adventure in the Soviet Union, which started as a dream of the great communist adventure but two decades into the revolution turned into the nightmare of the Great Terror. Adventure was implicated in the violent realities of Stalinism through tropes of the adventure genre, such as the loneliness of the adventurer in a precarious world impenetrable by reason. Understanding this situation requires a focus on philosophies of both adventure and terror. For instance, Hegel’s philosophy of adventure will help us to reveal features of the lived experience in times of terror, whilst Mikhail Ryklin’s philosophy of terror sheds light on the significance of the adventure genre in the Soviet 1930s. This double focus allows articulation of a primary feature of violence that is often overlooked, namely, the fundamental reciprocity that structures it. In the Soviet context, we find historically neglected but critically important reflections on the relation between violence and adventure in the life and works of Lev Kopelev. We also find a unique deliberation on the dialectics of violence (and counter-violence) in Evgeni Shvarc’s adventure tale (1943) which can be fruitfully read in dialogue with Arendt’s vital distinction between violence and power. Reconsidering these sources is an important task for today given that Russian politics has once again, 30 years after perestroika, regressed into mass violence.

    • Archival violence

      https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00071_1

      Photographs of violence carry an implicit critique of the social order from which they emerge. This necessitates the systemic management of their affect. Recognition of the experience carried by these signals has the potential to catalyse and contribute to emancipatory thought and action. The apparatus of epistemic control – characterized here as the – has evolved to neutralize their affective potential. Certain artworks that reconfigure photographs of violence illuminate the nature of this neutralizing mechanism. They mimic and subvert the forms of representational archivization and suggest a a repository of traumatic representation which serves to release affective trauma from its epistemic suppression. One example of this counter-archival practice is – . A body of work from 2011 by artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, which uses Bertolt Brecht’s or (1955) as a point of departure for examining the representation of twenty-first century violence.

  • Photowork

      • Photography as violence: On experience and manipulation

        Authors: Hilde Honerud and Jon Honerud
        https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00072_7

        This publication presents a selection of photographic work by Hilde Honerud, made in collaboration with Yoga and Sports with Refugees (YSR) in Lesbos, Greece. It is introduced by a text coauthored with Jon Honerud. In order to engage with the experiences and the vulnerable position of the refugees involved, this project used increasingly apparent formal manipulations to convey an experience beyond the documentary image and to push observers to question the objectivity of images; to move from representation to immediate experience. This entailed a kind of violence to the images that could only be done after spending a long time getting to know the organization and its context. The process raised a number of ethical questions, which we attempt to address in the text accompanying these images. The selection of images published here were part of the exhibition , at the Vestfold Art Centre, Tonsberg, Norway (9 June–10 July 2022).

  • Discussion

      • The choreography of violence: A discussion between Harri Pälviranta and Stefanie Baumann

        https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00073_7

        How is violence conventionally portrayed and where does violence lie in representation? How does photography mediate the relationships between different forms and ideas, moments and experiences of violence? These were some of the questions addressed in a conversation between artist Harri Pälviranta and philosopher Stefanie Baumann organized by Alexandra Athanasiadou, founder and director of the online platform Philosophy & Photography Lab (PHLSPH), during the international Photography Festival, Imago Lisboa, in Lisbon during October 2022. The discussion presented here is edited from a transcript by Athanasiadou. It took place at Lusófona University in Lisbon on the occasion of Pälviranta’s exhibition at the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea (MNAC) (6 October 2021–8 January 2023) and focuses on two series of works in the exhibition, and .

  • Commentary

      • The portraits of disease

        https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00074_7

        ‘The portraits of disease’ explores the link between the symbolic use of diseases and the propagation of ideologies. It traces the origins of the term ‘Sick Man of Asia’ back to British newspapers in the mid-eighteenth century and its development into a metaphor for actual pathogens. The author contends that coloniality and pathogens share similarities, as both are highly transmissible and cannot be seen with the naked eye. The text also examines the influence of German-influenced microbiological research in the Japanese Empire on the expansion of public health methods and institutions in Taiwan, Korea and north-eastern China. This study calls for a broader conversation about the intersections between science, ideology and power in our contemporary global context.

Volumes & issues

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test