Photography After Capitalism: Conversation and book launch
Posted on behalf of: School of Media, Arts and Humanities
Last updated: Monday, 15 February 2021
Dr Ben Burbridge's new book Photography After Capitalism (Goldsmiths Press, 2020) will be launched in a special online event on Wednesday 17 February.
In the book Ben makes the case for a radically expanded conception of photography, encompassing the types of labour too often obscured by black-boxed technologies, slick platform interfaces, and the compulsion to display lives to others.
Bringing together cultural criticism, social history, and political philosophy, Ben examines how representations of our photographic lives – in advertising, journalism, scholarship and, particularly, contemporary art – shape a sense of what photography is and the social relations that comprise it.
More precisely, he focuses on how different critical and creative strategies – from the appropriation of social media imagery to performative traversals of the network, from documentaries about secretive manual labour to science fiction fantasies of future sabotage – affect our understanding of photography's interactions with political and economic systems.
Joining Ben will be Charlotte Cotton, Curator in Residence at the California Museum of Photography, as they explore a range of questions in a far-reaching conversation about the politics and economics of contemporary photographic cultures.
The event is a collaboration between the Photographers' Gallery, London, and Sussex's Centre for Photography and Visual Culture.
It is a pay-what-you-can event. You are welcome to attend for free, or can make a donation.
For more information and to book a place, please visit the Photographers' Gallery website.