Crowds and Commons: Figuring Photography from Above and Below

Histories and Studies in Popular Culture edited by K. S. Prathap, 2013

This essay, "The Economy of Photographs: possibilities for a new Reading of Riots" attempts to understand the entry of critical hermeneutics into the economy of photographs. Every act of interpretation is carried out according to a dominant ideology and critical hermeneutics helps in unraveling the dominance of ideology. As distinct from other modes of interpretation, critical hermeneutics affords a space for the observer in the interpretative process, lending a third dimension to the real and the represented. The reader here becomes a witness to the multiple

2002

Revisiting the array of image formats for the scenic picturing of urban environments and concomitant spectator roles, the topic of this investigation is how certain crowd formations serve as manifestations of ideological power in modern cities. Examples of crowd depictions are drawn from both visual art and popular culture. Michel de Certeau sees panoptic surveillance in the modern city as calling forth a "scenic other" located below its threshold of visibility. Prompted by this notion, the aim of this study is to investigate the historical conjunctions between stereotypical views of urban masses and urban spaces in ideological perspectives, as well as certain typiconic features of a number of alternative visual traditions in Western depictions of the populace in urban settings. Verbeel jou dat jy een van 'n menigte is: ideologiekritiek op uitbeeldings van stedelike skares Die onderwerp van hierdie herbeskouing van beeldformate en verwante betragtersrolle in scéniese uitbeeldings van stedelike omgewings is bepaalde skareformasies waardeur ideologiese mag in moderne stede gemanifesteer word. Voorbeelde van skarevoorstellings in die visuele kunste sowel as die populêre kultuur word betrek. Panoptiese bewaking in die moderne stad roep volgens Michel de Certeau 'n "scéniese andere" op, geleë ónder die drempel van sigbaarheid. Met dié siening as vertrekpunt, word kultuurhistoriese verbande ondersoek tussen stereotipe sienings van stedelike massas en stedelike ruimtes in bepaalde ideologiese beskouings en, aan die ander kant, die tipikoniese eienskappe van 'n aantal alternatiewe visuele tradisies wat 'n rol gespeel het in Westerse voorstellings van stedelike bevolkings.

Visual Studies, 2019

Filmer le quotidien, 2019

[English-language original of "Foules et scènes: figures cinématographiques de la collectivité." Translated by Marion Froger. In Sarah Leperchey and José Moure, eds., Filmer le quotidien. Bruxelles: Impressions Nouvelles, 2019, pp. 233-249.]

Southern Communication Journal, 2018

Photography and its Publics, 2020

From the point of view of cultural critique and theories of the public sphere, stock photography seems virtually unredeemable. Largely hidden from the public, the stock industry nevertheless creates the bulk of commercial still images (and much of the video footage) used in advertising, marketing and publishing across a range of print, visual and digital media, and also controls key historical and photojournalistic archives. Its operations so patently exemplify processes of standardization, commodification, alienation, illusion and stereotypical classification that it is hard to think of a better pedagogical example for introductory courses on the theory of the culture industry or the society of the spectacle. Moreover, its core product - the ‘generic image’ – seems an utter betrayal of the very essence of photography as the epiphanic trace of a unique referent. Stock photography, then, is doubly ‘fallen’: it is the perfect ‘bad object’ of both cultural production research and photography theory. Viewing stock photography as a media industry and as a cultural practice, the cultural critic stands awe-struck, overwhelmed by the purifying urge to unveil its invisibility and deconstruct its seeming banality. This paper fleshes out the familiar terms of this critique (for which the author bears some responsibility), and the political-scholarly impulses it entails. And then it asks: is that all? Is there nothing remaining to be said about a cultural phenomenon like stock photography except that we would be better off without it? Or – reading it dialectically with the help of Walter Benjamin and Fredric Jameson – that it (at best) fleetingly reveals the utopian dynamic nesting at the heart of capitalist modes of cultural production? Or are there other things we can learn from stock photography as a social and aesthetic practice: about the irreducibility of media to ontological essences, about the circulation of attention and the multifariousness of public representation, and about the generality of photographs as agents of similarity and connectivity among strangers? Thinking about stock photography beyond its traditional critique – treating it as a good ‘bad object’ - can open up new directions for assessing the public value of apparently debased forms.

Social Semiotics, 2001