[ecrea] New book: Nonhuman Photography

New book
*NONHUMAN PHOTOGRAPHY* by Joanna Zylinska (MIT Press, 2017)

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/nonhuman-photography

Today, in the age of CCTV, drones, medical body scans, and satellite 
images, photography is increasingly decoupled from human agency and 
human vision. In her book /Nonhuman Photography/, Joanna Zylinska offers 
a new philosophy of photography, going beyond the human-centric view to 
consider imaging practices from which the human is absent. Zylinska 
argues further that even those images produced by humans, whether 
artists or amateurs, entail a nonhuman, mechanical element—that is, they 
involve the execution of technical and cultural algorithms that shape 
our image-making devices as well as our viewing practices. At the same 
time, she notes, photography is increasingly mobilized to document the 
precariousness of the human habitat and tasked with helping us imagine a 
better tomorrow. With its conjoined human-nonhuman agency and vision, 
Zylinska claims, photography functions as both a form of control and a 
life-shaping force.

Zylinska explores the potential of photography for developing new modes 
of seeing and imagining, and presents images from her own photographic 
practice. She also examines the challenges posed by digitization to 
established notions of art, culture, and the media. In connecting 
biological extinction and technical obsolescence, and discussing the 
parallels between photography and fossilization, she proposes to 
understand photography as a light-induced process of fossilization 
across media and across time scales.

*Joanna Zylinska* is Professor of New Media and Communications and 
Co-Head of the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, 
University of London. The author of six books – including /Minimal 
Ethics for the Anthropocene/ 
<http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/minimal-ethics.html> (Open 
Humanities Press, 2014, e-version freely available 
<http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/minimal-ethics.html>) and /Life 
after New Media: Mediation as a Vital Process/ (with Sarah Kember; MIT 
Press, 2012) – she is also a photographic artist and curator. In 2013 
she was Artistic Director of Transitio_MX05 'Biomediations', the biggest 
Latin American new media festival, which took place in Mexico City. Her 
own practice involves experimenting with different kinds of photomedia.


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