Unlearning Decisive Moments of Photography
In her series of statements, Ariella Azoulay will depart from the common theories and histories that present photography as a sui generis practice and locate its moment of emergence in the mid-nineteenth century in relation to technological development and male inventors. Instead, she proposes to locate the origins of photography in the “New World,” in the early phases of European colonial enterprise, and study photographs alongside early accounts of imperial expeditions. The posts have their origin in Ariella Azoulay’s forthcoming book Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (New York: Verso, 2019).
Ariella Azoulay
Ariella Azoulay is Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Comparative Literature at Brown University, a documentary film director and an independent curator of archives and exhibitions. Her publications include Aïm Deüelle Lüski and Horizontal Photography (Leuven University Press and Cornell University Press, 2013); The Resolution of The Suspect (with photographer: Miki Kratsman; Radius Books/Peabody Museum Press, 2016); From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947–1950 (Pluto Press, 2011), Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012) and The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008); co-author with Adi Ophir of The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2012). She directed the following films: Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47–48 (2012), I Also Dwell Among Your Own People: Conversations with Azmi Bishara (2004).