Photography student working in darkroom

Inscriptions: Verso: [stamped] Photograph by Freda Leinwand. [463 West Street, Studio 229G, New York, NY 10014].

Through the Lenses of Q’eqchi Maya: (Re)Framing the Story of Development in a Guatemalan Indigenous Community Through Participant-Created Photographs

The question of evaluations of development projects has been widely debated within the field of international development, with scholars and development practitioners calling for increased community-driven evaluations. However, there has been a paucity of research in community-led project evaluations, and a largely absent investigation utilizing visual anthropology/sociology methodologies. This paper seeks to shift this power by giving voice to the intended beneficiaries of an eco-tourism project in a rural indigenous Guatemala village. Through photographs taken by community members and corresponding interviews, this paper shows the way in which community members have and continue to reframe the idea of development in their village. Specifically, my analysis reveals how residents see changing forms of access, how they reframe ideas of beauty and modernization, and how they reframe their relationship to the land through Western conservation and private property ideals. This research thus provides an alternative narrative to the Western NGO’s evaluations and knowledge production, especially in respect to development and indigenous knowledge. By showing how community members are reframing the story of development, this paper demonstrates the usefulness of using participatory documentary photography in community-led evaluations, and helps balance the playing field by providing a much-needed alternative narrative of project evaluation.

Renouncing the Single Image: Photography and the Realism of Abstraction

This essay addresses the issue of the relationship between abstraction and realism that it argues is at stake in the rejection of any primacy accorded to the single image, in favour of a sequencing of photographs according to certain, often novelistic and epic ideas of narrative form. Setting out from the opening text of Allan Sekula’s Fish Story, the article explores the competing tendencies towards what Georg Lukács termed ‘narration’ and ‘description’ as these are traced throughout Sekula's project (in part through a comparison with the contrasting works of Andreas Gursky). The essay concludes by suggesting the ways in which it is the irreducible actuality of abstraction within the concrete everydayness of capitalism's social world that means that all photographic ‘realism’ is intrinsically ‘haunted’ by a certain spectre of that ‘self-moving substance in the ‘shape of money’, as Marx calls it, or of the abstract form of capital itself.

‘Don’t look down!’: A short history of rooftopping photography

The article examines the practice known as ‘rooftopping photography’ and its significance for the representation of vertical cities. It begins by charting the historical development of architecture as a viewing platform in the age of the camera, and dwells on the imagery of cityscapes from above that emerged in the inter-war period. Against this background, the essay investigates how rooftopping arose out of the urban exploration movement and became a global trend in the early 2010s. This phenomenon is situated within its wider social and cultural context, and is discussed with reference to the online media discourse that contributed to its public visibility. A set of ideas from the philosophy of photography and visual culture inform the critical analysis of rooftopping photographs: this broad and diverse body of images is examined with a focus on two predominant modes of representation—panoramic and plunging views. The affective responses elicited by so-called ‘vertigo-inducing’ images are discussed through the concept of vicarious kinaesthesia, which offers insights into the nexus between visceral experience and visual representation that lies at the core of rooftopping. By unpacking this interplay, the essay explores a phenomenon that has hitherto been given little scholarly attention and reflects on its broader implications for the relationship between photography and architecture today.

The technical and artistic branches and ways of organizing production in Argentine soap operas

Production processes and work organization in the cultural industries have been little discussed. For this reason, the study focuses on the production phases and the division of labor in technical and artistic branches in Argentine soap operas. There are six branches: production, direction, photography, art, sound and edition. We explain the branches, the workers involved and their function and activities. This research is based on a communicational perspective, the Political Economy of Communication and recovers contributions of the Sociology of Labour. From this combination, we attempt to provide elements of analysis to understand the functioning and organisation of daily television series. In the same way, we examine the creative work, the types of work redundant or random, the division of labour and the economies of time. The methodological approach is qualitative. In this way, the examination is based on the production of interviews with key actors of the sector and the documentary and bibliographical survey so as to systematize the data for the research.

Spanish Photography Yearbooks between the Autarchy and the Transition A Documentary Analysis (1958-1980)

The first yearbook on Spanish artistic photography was published in 1924 and following the Civil War of 1936-1939, Madrid’s Real Sociedad Fotográfica, through its Sombras magazine, published two others in 1946 and 1948. There would not be another publication until 1958, when the Agrupación Fotográfica Almeriense put out the third yearbook, during a period of economic recovery following the country’s admission to the U.N. at the end of 1955. However, it was not until 1972 when Spanish photography resumed the publication of annual summaries of the authors and their works. From then on until 1980, nine yearbooks were published by two institutions: The Consorcio del Libro Técnico (Cotec) and the Editorial Everest publishing company. The object of this study is to analyze the contents of these yearbooks in order to determine and furnish new data on the history of Spanish photography: authors, works, publications, national and international relations and the purpose of their publications as a means for supporting photography.

Del bodegón a la basura. Representaciones de alimentos en la historia del arte desde la perspectiva de la fotografía contemporánea

El artículo habla de la representación de alimentos en la Historia del Arte; estudia porqué las representaciones de comida tradicionalmente han sido consideradas como un género menor y plantea la hipótesis de su revitalización en el mercado del arte contemporáneo a través de la fotografía. Mediante el análisis de imágenes de comida en diferentes épocas, el texto explica que los bodegones casi siempre han sido símbolos de la superabundancia, presentando fundamentalmente alimentos, y en algunas ocasiones desperdicios. Continúa con la idea de que las sobras en las antigüedad eran orgánicas y sin embargo, en la actualidad los still life se han convertido en representaciones de basura, de desechos, y desperdicios en todas sus acepciones. El texto demuestra, mediante el análisis de algunas obras contemporáneas fotográficas, que el tema de la comida hoy es mucho más relevante de lo que la crítica de arte argumentaba en el pasado. Las imágenes de objetos conforman un sistema de representación y significado en continua evolución que es el reflejo de nuestra cultura. Estas fotografías nos hablan de sociología, política y economía mostrándonos en la actualidad el impacto que está sufriendo el medioambiente debido a nuestras rutinas cotidianas.

Argaric Sociology: Sex and Death

The detailed, rich and diverse Argaric funerary record offers an opportunity to explore social dimensions that usually remain elusive for prehistoric research, such us social rules on kinship rights and obligations, sexual tolerance and the role of funerary practices in preserving the economic and political organization. This paper addresses these topics through an analysis of the social meaning of Argaric double tombs by looking at body treatment and composition of grave goods assemblages according to gender and class affiliation. The Argaric seems to have been a conservative society, scarcely tolerant regarding homosexuality, and willing to celebrate ancestry associated to certain places as a means of asserting residence and property rights.

Photography, copyright, and the South Kensington experiment

Reviews the development of UK copyright law in the 19th century concerning photographs of works of art in public collections. Discusses the project at South Kensington Museum to sell photographs of works of art to the public at cost price, and the introduction of copyright protection for original photographs under the Fine Arts Copyright Act 1862. Considers the parliamentary debates on whether photography was worthy of copyright protection. Examines whether lessons should be learned now that digital technology offers the opportunity to improve public access to works of art.

Architecture and health care: a place for sociology.

Sociologists of health and illness have tended to overlook the architecture and buildings used in health care. This contrasts with medical geographers who have yielded a body of work on the significance of places and spaces in the experience of health and illness. A review of sociological studies of the role of the built environment in the performance of medical practice uncovers an important vein of work, worthy of further study. Through the historically situated example of hospital architecture, this article seeks to tease out substantive and methodological issues that can inform a distinctive sociology of healthcare architecture. Contemporary healthcare buildings manifest design models developed for hotels, shopping malls and homes. These design features are congruent with neoliberal forms of subjectivity in which patients are constituted as consumers and responsibilised citizens. We conclude that an adequate sociology of healthcare architecture necessitates an appreciation of both the construction and experience of buildings, exploring the briefs and plans of their designers, and observing their everyday uses. Combining approaches and methods from the sociology of health and illness and science and technology studies offers potential for a novel research agenda that takes healthcare buildings as its substantive focus.

Using UAV acquired photography and structure from motion techniques for studying glacier landforms: application to the glacial flutes at Isfallsglaciären

Glacier and ice sheet retreat exposes freshly deglaciated terrain which often contains small-scale fragile geomorphological features which could provide insight into subglacial or submarginal processes. Subaerial exposure results in potentially rapid landscape modification or even disappearance of the minor–relief landforms as wind, weather, water and vegetation impacts on the newly exposed surface. Ongoing retreat of many ice masses means there is a growing opportunity to obtain high resolution geospatial data from glacier forelands to aid in the understanding of recent subglacial and submarginal processes. Here we used an unmanned aerial vehicle to capture close-range aerial photography of the foreland of Isfallsglaciären, a small polythermal glacier situated in Swedish Lapland. An orthophoto and a digital elevation model with ~2 cm horizontal resolution were created from this photography using structure from motion software. These geospatial data was used to create a geomorphological map of the foreland, documenting moraines, fans, channels and flutes. The unprecedented resolution of the data enabled us to derive morphological metrics (length, width and relief) of the smallest flutes, which is not possible with other data products normally used for glacial landform metrics mapping. The map and flute metrics compare well with previous studies, highlighting the potential of this technique for rapidly documenting glacier foreland geomorphology at an unprecedented scale and resolution. The vast majority of flutes were found to have an associated stoss-side boulder, with the remainder having a likely explanation for boulder absence (burial or erosion). Furthermore, the size of this boulder was found to strongly correlate with the width and relief of the lee-side flute. This is consistent with the lee-side cavity infill model of flute formation. Whether this model is applicable to all flutes, or multiple mechanisms are required, awaits further study.

Shared Photography: (Photo)journalism and political mobilisation in Rio de Janeiro's favelas

One of the most important civic phenomena emerging from favelas in Rio de Janeiro today is “community (photo)journalism”, which is practised by favela residents who are trained in journalistic and artistic techniques to raise critical awareness and promote political mobilisation in- and outside favelas. This paper looks at some of the work produced at one training place for community photographers, the agency-school Imagens do Povo (“Images of the People”) in Nova Holanda, a favela located in Rio’s North Zone. Using an ethnographic approach, this article first provides an account of the working practices of the School and its photographers. This is followed by a discussion of a small sample of their photographic work, for which we employ a social semiotic paradigm of image analysis. This methodological synergy provides insights into how these journalists document long-term structural as well as “spectacular” violence in favelas, while at the same time striving to capture some of the “beauty” of these communities. The paper concludes that this form of photographic work constitutes an important step towards a more analytical brand of journalism with different news values that encourage a more context-sensitive approach to covering urban violence and favela life.

KEYWORDS: alternative media, Imagens do Povo, multimodality, news values, photojournalism.

Photography, desire and resistance in the lives of women, following the 1979 revolution in Iran

In my last four years of PhD by practice at the Royal College of Art, I have conducted extensive research on archival photography including materials held at the Museum der Weltkulturen, Frankfurt am Main; the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies (IICHS) , Tehran; and the International Institute of Social History (IISH), Amsterdam. My project started with the fortuitous encounter with a photograph taken by Iranian photographer Hengameh Golestan on the morning of March 8, 1979. The photograph shows women marching in the streets of Teheran in protest against the introduction of the compulsory Islamic dress code. In 1936 Reza Shah had decreed a ban on the headscarf as part oh his westernising project. Over forty years later following the 1979 Revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini reversed this decision by ordering that women should now cover their hair. This ‘found image’ presented me with a glimpse into the occulted history of my own country and the opportunity to advance towards a deeper learning and understanding of the event of March 8, 1979 a significant date in the history of feminism in Iran. In what follows I revisit the history of Iran since the 1979 revolution with a particular inflexion on the role women played in that history. However, as my project develops , I gradually move away from the socio-historical facts to investigate the legacy of the revolution on the representations of women in photography, film and literature as well as the creation of an imaginary space of self representation. To this end my writing moves constantly between the documentary, the analytical and the personal. In parallel I have made photographs and video works which are explorations of the veil as object of fascination and desire as well as symbol of repression.