Politics is everywhere and it is not just limited to the government. The intersection of arts and political activism are two fields defined by a shared focus of creating engagement that shifts boundaries, changes relationships and creates new paradigms. (158) (177) 3 (2010): 299–309. Roberts, Photography and Its Violations 61. (25) Buckley, “Workshop of Filthy Creation,” 838. Douglas Harper, Visual Sociology (London and New York: Routledge, 2012). There is “a measure of indeterminacy in moving from the text ‘in itself’ (as analyzed by the critic) to how it is actually read.”61 Audience analysis, however, is largely absent from work on politics and art in political science. (147) (90) That those who claimed we were less than human were lying. Martin Lister (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 7. (30) Diana DePardo-Minsky, Assistant Professor of Art History at Bard College, noted that the gray home in the background of Procession of the Magi is a villa—another significant marker of prosperity during the Renaissance.“Most of the world was still working hard to get by,” she said, “and some people had so much money they could have a house in the countryside for … Strauss, Between the Eyes, 10. 1 (2011): 71–91; Dora Apel, War Culture and the Contest of Images (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2012); Nathan Roger, Image Warfare in the War on Terror (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Liam Kennedy and Caitlin Patrick, eds., The Violence of the Image: Photography and International Conflict (London and New York: I. Daniel J. Sherman and Terry Nardin (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 3. (211) "Elegantly written. 2 (2007); Matti Hyvärinen and Lisa Muszynski, eds. (52) Roberts, Photography and Its Violations, 152. Mark Reinhardt, “Picturing Violence: Aesthetics and the Anxiety of Critique,” in Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain, ed. Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices, foreword by Linda Nochlin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 176. Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 81. Many photographs collected in family albums or their electronic equivalents are, due to the absence of depictions of physical force, photographs of (at least negative) peace. It is also important to note that these artists, by employing all sorts of digital technologies and combining them skillfully, successfully challenge widely held assumptions of African backwardness, technological and otherwise. As time passed, the visual and performing arts became more politically provocative, with artists using their work to make statements or highlight certain issues. In this excerpt from Phaidon’s The 21 st Century Art Book, we look back at some of the most interesting and important examples of political art from the past decade and a half. Axel Heck and Gabi Schlag, “Securitizing Images: The Female Body and the War in Afghanistan,” European Journal of International Relations 19, no. Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris, Standard Operating Procedure: A War Story (London: Picador, 2009), 195–196. For example, photographer James Nachtwey, who regularly publishes photographs of human suffering without explanatory texts, has been criticized for so doing. Our mission is to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. The title of this section is derived from Africa remix, a project of “artists subverting colonial imagery”204 by means of digital collages, who by so doing redefine history, memory, and identity individually and collectively. After all, as Chinua Achebe notes, “a visitor can sometimes see what the owner of the house has ignored.”116 Thus, differentiation is required. It is more common to suggest that it is the photographer who operates in a safe zone offered by the camera which protects him or her from the surrounding environment. (43) 3 (2011): 622–643. (156) (118) Gilgen, “History after Film,” 56. 4 (2013): 891–913. Bennett, Empathic Visions; Kaplan, Trauma Culture; Lizelle Bisschoff and Stefanie van de Peer, eds., Art and Trauma in Africa: Representations of Reconciliation in Film, Art, Music and Literature (London and New York: I. Collaborative photography projects cannot be reduced to what Gottesman calls “pseudo-democratic rhetoric”; indeed, his criticism targets processes of editing and publishing photographs, not the production process (which was emphasized above). The New Art is immediate, political. 3 (2013): 203–221. In the 1980s and 1990s, some members of Congress sought to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts after complaints by religious conservative organizations about some NEA-funded projects the groups deemed offensive. Liam Kennedy and Caitlin Patrick (London and New York: I. But also apart from terminology, the critique is not entirely convincing. What is required is a certain type of visibility linked to and derived from the invisibility of the represented. That those who said we were ugly were lying. (58) However—and this complicates the notion of violence—as was observed at that time by Pearl Cleage Polk when she was photographed: He would take our pictures and let us see that those who said we were invisible were lying. Ritchin, Bending the Frame, 98. She is an Irish painter and performance artist who graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 1983 and went on to complete a Masters degree in Equality Studies from University College Dublin. Mirzoeff, Watching Babylon, 117–171. (144) Daniel J. Sherman and Terry Nardin, eds.. David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro, eds. Nick Couldry, Inside Culture: Re-imagining the Method of Cultural Studies (London, Thousand Oaks, CA, and New Delhi: Sage, 2000), 58. Why does photography matter? (37) It bothers me when these projects use a pseudo-democratic rhetoric to describe the act of handing out cameras, as though distributing cameras alone is “empowerment” or “giving voice to the voiceless.” When I see this kind of stuff, I become listless; the process is so much more complicated than that.192. Michel Foucault, for example, argues that “it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say.”76 Jae Emerling states that “one never sees what one says, and vice versa.”77 Writing or talking about images, then, can never adequately represent what one sees; like every translation, it is the invention of something new. (36) (42) Many aftermath projects are indeed characterized by a photographer’s long-term engagement with his or her subject. It is alleged to exploit the subjects depicted, to misrepresent them, and to fix them in the subject position of “victim” without their own agency and in need of help from others; to create—rather than portray—victims123; to revictimize and retraumatize people; to turn individuals into specimens representing, for example, preconceived “racial types”124; to expose people to the gaze of others who are said to be “stronger than the one who is watched”125; to contribute to “the asymmetrical ethical viewing position” characterizing the viewer-subject interface126; and, ultimately, to reproduce power relations including gender relations. This may be inevitable, but has to be reflected upon all the same. Roberts, Photography and Its Violations 111. However, approaching the photographs as photoessay may make viewers misunderstand the people depicted and their subject positions during the genocide. the manipulativeness and savvy of the photographer, who entered a situation of physical danger, social restrictedness, human decay, or combinations of these and saved us the trouble.”130 Mieke Bal, discussing the relationship between photographic representation (especially representation of people in pain) and viewers, refers to the act of looking at photographic representations of human suffering as a “secondary exploitation” owing to “theft of [the subjects’] subjectivity,” the first exploitation committed by a photographer, the second by a viewer.131 Thus, there would appear to be a chain of acts of violence (or subjugation or exploitation), from the social world through the photographic act to the act of looking. Gregory Elliott (London and New York: Verso, 2009). Martin Lister, Introduction to The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, 2nd ed., ed. What ties bind art, power, and patronage? Mirzoeff shows that the modern state has replaced permanent visibility (Bentham’s panopticon) with permanent invisibility (the camp and its inhabitants) as an organizing principle underlying social control.147 Disappearance often includes invisibility (although photographs remain, testifying to existence).148 Invisibility is one organizing principle among others: simultaneously the state develops and uses remote-controlled aerial photographic devices—satellites and drones—with which to expand domestic systems of surveillance, to establish permanent external control, and to monitor and kill people (accompanied by a fine-meshed net of CCTV cameras in metropolitan areas). (201) 4 (2003): 511–531; David Campbell, “Cultural Governance and Pictorial Resistance: Reflections on the Imaging of War,” Review of International Studies 29 (2003): 57–73; Daniel J. Sherman and Terry Nardin, eds., Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006); David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro, eds. (20) Charles Weber and Johan Galtung (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 188. Critics often focus on what images do not tell their viewers without additional information, but they do not often ask what images do tell them without contextual clues.64 Even without additional information, the photograph discussed by Hariman and Lucaites might touch viewers for a variety of reasons, including the extent of pain it communicates and the indifference, casualness, and business-as-usual attitude of the soldiers depicted in the same image seemingly disregarding the pain of others. Historically, political authorities have been a source of patronage for artists. MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema, 246. The endowment provides grants to museums, theater groups and other arts projects and entities. (115) (98) (165) Christine Ross, “Introduction: The Precarious Visualities of Contemporary Art and Visual Culture,” in Precarious Visualities: New Perspectives on Identification in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, ed. Art is a way of creating, feeling, expressing yourself and it creates a link between your internal self and exterior, connecting them. (24) Rather than being only an expression of nostalgia (which probably is part of the viewing experience), showing that (some form of) peace had been possible before violence gained the upper hand may also indicate that peace might be possible again should violence stop. It seems to be a part of the visual strategies applied by many visual artists to make the viewers’ subject positions more complicated. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Grégoire Chamayou writes that according to Walter Benjamin, “technology, today used for death-dealing purposes, may eventually recover its emancipating potential and readopt the playful and aesthetic aspirations that secretly inspire it,”155 and that is one way of addressing van Houtryve’s art politically. Art’s contribution to political discourse can also be analyzed. Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003). In order to be effective in its pastoral role, religious art had to be clear, persuasive, and powerful. Creative thinkers and makers provide their communities with joy, interaction, and inspiration, but they also give thoughtful critique to our political, economic and social systems — pushing communities to engage thoughtfully and make steps toward social progress. However, any conceptualization of peace photography is derivative of the underlying concept of peace, and this dependence limits the applicability of any conceptual approach to peace photography. Its limitations give rise to a set of politically repugnant temptations—pity, indifference, cynicism and resentment.” Creating compassion should therefore be replaced with “creating solidarity” as the main aim of documentary photography.105, In another variation, this argument is applied to those viewers who are neither depoliticized nor desensitized as a result of their viewing experience, viewers who do not capitulate in light of the number of images of human suffering seemingly communicating helplessness and hopelessness and who would want to respond to the conditions depicted in images. Liam Kennedy and Caitlin Patrick (London and New York: I. (183) (204) World Press Photo Award 2015; see http://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo/2015/contemporary-issues/tomas-van-houtryve (accessed May 7, 2015). “The social-relational content of the photograph is not simply descriptive-historical, but affective and empathic: in short, it provides an emotional ‘hold.’”71 Questions pertaining to emotive and affective dimensions of the visual experience, however, are notoriously difficult to grasp; hence the tendency in liberal thought to declare the affective dimensions of art “personal matters.” This designation has the additional benefits of depoliticizing emotions and strengthening liberal politics by excluding those from full participation who are alleged to be less rational and more emotive.72. (106) Visual image production is characterized by increasing overlap between photojournalism and art photography, with a number of photographers moving freely among subgenres or producing a body of work that does not easily fit into either category. If they want to visualize that which cannot be seen, artists such as Norfolk, James Bridle, and Trevor Paglen have to visualize their subject matter in a way that affects viewers and tricks them into engagement. Jae Emerling, Photography: History and Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 119. This mistrust is neither entirely justified nor entirely logical, as it emphasizes the quantitative dimension of image production at the expense of qualitative considerations: just because there are more images than individuals can deal with—and there have always been more images than individuals could deal with—does not mean that it is impossible for individuals to engage with selected images; it is a choice, and this choice often reflects the quality of images. Sticking to some degree of obscurity and invisibility while representing the obscure and invisible is hoped to result in viewers’ engagement—engagement with that which even after it has been rendered visible still retains some degree of obscurity and incomprehensibility, requiring further investigation on the part of viewers; in other words, engagement with the artists’ politics and not only with their aesthetics.150. The Vietnam war spawned a massive revolution in American culture that solidified into an identifiable aesthetic of pop and folk art, like that of Andy Warhol and Yoko Ono, which associated the hippie attitude with counterculture. This article discusses artistic and performative imaginations of the political; knowledge production through art; art’s engagement with violence and peace; the art-audience interface; ethics and aesthetics of political art; and art’s function as a political witness. (74) Such research is interdisciplinary and open to methodological pluralism and innovation. That the photographer would let his or her subjects “bloom” in the ”safe zone” before his or her camera is an unusual approach to photography and the photographer–subject relationship. Olivier Asselin, Johanne Lamoureux, and Christine Ross (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), 7. (179) (164) The photographic act is an act of choice and discrimination, assigning importance to something or someone at the expense of something or someone else, which or who remains unphotographed. Indeed, many trends in current military and security policies are neither supposed to be seen nor easily accessible due to geographical remoteness. James Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro, eds., Caitlin Patrick, “Ruins and Traces: Exhibiting Conflict in Guy Tillim’s, James Johnson, “‘The Arithmetic of Compassion’: Rethinking the Politics of Photography,”, Mark Reinhardt, “Painful Photographs: From the Ethics of Spectatorship to Visual Politics,” in, Christine Sylvester, “Picturing the Cold War: An Art Graft/Eye Graft,”, Bernadette Buckley, “The Workshop of Filthy Creation: Or Do Not Be Alarmed, This Is Only a Test,”, Gerald Holden, “Cinematic IR, the Sublime, and the Indistinctness of Art,”, Cerwyn Moore and Laura J. Shepherd, “Aesthetics and International Relations: Towards a Global Politics,”, Thomas Keenan, “Disappearances: The Photographs of Trevor Paglen,”, Steve Smith, “Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11,”, Christine Sylvester, “Postmodern Feminist Methodology and International Relations: Learning from the Arts,” in, Axel Heck and Gabi Schlag, “Securitizing Images: The Female Body and the War in Afghanistan,”, Rune S. Andersen and Frank Möller, “Engaging the Limits of Visibility: Photography, Security and Surveillance,”, Lene Hansen, “Theorizing the Image for Security Studies: Visual Securitization and the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis,”, Alex Danchev and Debbie Lisle, “Introduction: Art, Politics, Purpose,”, Allen Feldman, “Violence and Vision: The Prosthetics and Aesthetics of Terror,” in, Michael C. Williams, “Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics,”, David Campbell, “Cultural Governance and Pictorial Resistance: Reflections on the Imaging of War,”. For example, they may be connected episodically. (188) Ethics and Images of Pain (London and New York: Routledge, 2012). Visual representations of peace in journalism and the visual arts most often reference peace negatively: by depicting its absence; by showing war, violence, and destruction realistically (within the limits of visual representation) in order to trigger opposition to war; and by intervening photographically in violent situations so that others can intervene in the conditions depicted with other, nonphotographic, and supposedly more effective means. Frank Möller, Visual Peace: Images, Spectatorship and the Politics of Violence (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 123. As such, the photographic act “cannot but be violating.”122 The photographic act is said to violate not only those who are not depicted, by discriminating against them, but also those who are. 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