Collaboration is a groundbreaking publication, by five great
thinkersand practitioners in photography, in collaboration with hundreds
of photographers, writers, critics, artists, and academics. This
collection uses the lens of collaboration to challenge dominant
narratives around photographic history and authorship. Working with an
accumulation of more than six hundred photographs, each entry breaks
apart photography's "single creator" tradition by bringing to light
tangible traces of collaboration--the various relationships, exchanges,
and interactions that occur in the making of any photograph and in the
shaping, undoing and transforming archives.
The book explores themes such as coercion and cooperation, friendship
and exploitation, shared interests and competition, and rivalry or
antagonistic partnership. Collaboration foregrounds key issues facing
photography, including gender, race, and societal
hierarchies/divisions--and their role in shaping and reshaping
identities and communities, and provoking resistance or conformity.
The photographs are presented alongside quotes, testimonies, and short
texts offering perspectives on the array of themes, geographies,
contexts, and events. The editors introduce each cluster of projects by
providing a framework to understand and decode the complex politics,
temporalities, and potentialities of photography. Collaboration
reconstructs the infrastructure of photography as a collaborative
practice and offers a pedagogical tool for practitioners and scholars of
photography.
