Capitalism and the Camera : Essays on Photography and Extraction

A provocative exploration of photography's relationship to capitalism, from leading theorists of visual culture.

Photography was invented between the publication of Adam Smith’s <i>The Wealth of Nations</i> and Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’s <i>The Communist Manifesto</i>. Taking the intertwined development of capitalism and the camera as their starting point, the essays in <i>Capitalism and the Camera </i>investigate the relationship between capitalist accumulation and the photographic image, and ask whether photography might allow us to refuse capitalism’s violence—and if so, how?<br><br>Drawn together in productive disagreement, the essays in this collection explore the relationship of photography to resource extraction and capital accumulation, from 1492 to the postcolonial; the camera’s potential to make visible critical understandings of capitalist production and society, especially economies of class and desire; and propose ways that the camera and the image can be used to build cultural and political counterpublics from which a democratic struggle against capitalism might emerge. <br><br>With essays by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Siobhan Angus, Kajri Jain, Walter Benn Michaels, T. J. Clark, John Paul Ricco, Blake Stimson, Chris Stolarski, Tong Lam, and Jacob Emery.