victoria.andelsman.14@ucl.ac.uk)
Examination candidate number: FDFT7
2
•
•
• •
4
• • •
• • •
ist of references
5
6
Pictures taken October 10, 2014
8
9
10
AFRICA
11
12
ISLAM WORLD
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
• •
•
•
32
• •
•
33
34
• •
• •
35
36
The pictures I’ve chosen expose photography’s specificity and allow us to reflect on photography as a world system, on the affective power of and on the camera’s agency. Photography’s specificity lies in its indexicality (Schaeffer 1990). As Barthes noted, the camera is not only capable of producing a copy of the event but it’s able to print or engrave its trace, making it impossible to deny that “the thing has been there”. In other words, because the photographic technology creates the image by letting light impregnate the paper, the resulting
photography is the product of a physical relationship with the subject it is representing. Photography is therefore able to record the past by adhering the referent (Pinney 2012). Wright has explained how photographs are thought of as “true copies” by the Solomon Island people and how this link between the referent and the photograph is what constitutes its affective power and enables the “reunion of the living and the dead”. It is the material trace of photography what makes photographs of ancestors or relatives powerful.
37
Family photographs
38
39
40
41
42
43
•
• •
44
• o
o
o
o
45
• o
o o
46
47
often to be found in the symbolic values each society attributes to these elements rather than in physical necessity.�
48
•
•
• •
•
•
49
50