Contemporary Photography as Collaboration / Progress in Mathematics (PDF)

This book explores a spectrum of contemporary photographic practices across the fields of image-making, curating, archiving, teaching, community development and activism that have envisioned photography as ontologically and ethically collaborative. By looking specifically into the contexts where collaborative projects are produced and shown, and into the dialogical relation to the people they engage with -in hospitals, in prisons, in working-class neighbourhoods, with indigenous people, refugees, women, persons experiencing homelessness, young people- the contributions from practitioners, scholars, and curators show participatory practices to create the conditions for building new subjectivities, or making visible a multiplicity of identities, thus opening up a new politics of visibility. Therefore, this book specifically addresses the political, counter-cultural dimension of collaborative projects, but also their subversiveness in relation to dominant practices within the field of photography: this includes a reinvention of the position of the photographer -in turns facilitator or project leader- of curating and exhibition models, of archiving methodologies, of photographic education and of market practices.

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Mathilde Bertrand is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Studies at Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, France. Her research focuses on the history of independent British photography in the post-war period, particularly on the role of photography collectives, photographic magazines and the community photography movement in fostering a discussion around the politics of representation from the 1970s onwards. She has published in the journals Photography and Culture, LISA e-journal, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, and co-edited Ici notre défaite a commencé, on The Miners' Strike, 1984-5 (Syllepses, 2016).

Karine Chambefort-Kay is Senior Lecturer in English studies and Visual Culture at Université Paris Est Créteil, France. Her research interests include the cultural, social, and political uses of images in British contemporary society, as well as exhibition and archive policies, and the issues of identity formation, memory and nationalism. She has published on various photographic practices and projects in the UK. She has published in the journals Image and Narrative, InMedia, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, and Archivo Papers Journal.