Civil Imagination

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Louise Bethlehem

Description

The "Copernican Revolution" in studying photography brings to light how images can both reinforce and resist power regimes
Understanding photography is more than a matter of assessing photographs, writes Ariella Azoulay. The photograph is merely one event in a sequence that constitutes photography and which always involves an actual or potential spectator in the relationship between the photographer and the individual portrayed. The shift in focus from product to practice, outlined in Civil Imagination, brings to light the way images can both reinforce and resist the oppressive reality foisted upon the people depicted.
Through photography, Civil Imagination seeks out relations of partnership, solidarity, and sharing that come into being at the expense of sovereign powers that threaten to destroy them. Azoulay argues that the "civil" must be distinguished from the "political" as the interest that citizens have in themselves, in others, in their shared forms of coexistence, as well as in the world they create and transform. Azoulay's book sketches out a new horizon of civil living for citizens as well as subjects denied citizenship-inevitable partners in a reality they are invited to imagine anew and to reconstruct.
Beautifully produced with many illustrations, Civil Imagination is a provocative argument for photography as a civic practice capable of reclaiming civil power.

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des Arts
• Nakba
• 1948 Palestinian exodus
• Criticism
• Theory
• Palestine
• Art
• Rape
• Susan Sontag
• Roland Barthes
• Guerre de Palestine de 1948
• Hannah Arendt

Informations

• Publié par: Verso
• Date de parution: 13 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784783013
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CIVIL IMAGINATION
CIVIL IMAGINATION
A Political Ontology of Photography
Revised and Expanded Second Edition
ARIELLA AZOULAY
Translated by Louise Bethlehem
This updated edition first published by Verso 2024
First published in the English language by Verso 2012
Translation © Louise Bethlehem 2012, 2015, 2024
The first edition was originally published as
[Civil Imagination: Political Ontology of Photography]
© Resling Publishing, Israel 2010
All rights reserved
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the images in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future editions.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217
www.versobooks.com
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-80429-259-4
eISBN-13: 978-1-78478-302-0 (US EBK)
eISBN-13: 978-1-78478-301-3 (UK EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress Has Cataloged the Hardcover Edition as Follows:
Azoulay, Ariella.
[Dimyon ezrahi. English]
Civil imagination : a political ontology of photography / Ariella Azoulay; translated by Louise Bethlehem.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84467-753-5
1. Photographic criticism—Israel. 2. Photography—Political aspects—Israel. 3. Photography—Philosophy. I. Title.
TR187.A98313 2012
770.1—dc23
2012006239
Typeset in Sabon by Hewer UK Ltd, Edinburgh
CONTENTS List of Figures
Introduction to the Second Edition one What Is Photography? two Rethinking the Political three The Photograph as a Source of Civil Knowledge four Civil Uses of Photography five “He Is My Ancestor”—Not a Museum’s Asset Epilogue: The Right Not to Be a Perpetrator
Notes Bibliography Index
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cover: Micha Kirshner, preparations for photographing Aisha al-Kurd and her son Yassir, 1988
Introduction
Micha Kirshner, Aisha al-Kurd and her son Yassir, 1988
1. What Is Photography?
1.1 Aïm Deüelle Lüski, Lemon cameras, 1977
1.2 Aïm Deüelle Lüski, picture taken with Lemon camera (convex), 1977
1.3 Aïm Deüelle Lüski, picture taken with Lemon camera (concave), 1977
1.4 Jerusalem, by Anne Paq, 2007
1.5 Biddu checkpoint, by Miki Kratsman, 2002
2. Rethinking the Political
2.1 Huda, Masud, by Micha Kirshner, 1988
2.2 “Collective Sleeping Arrangements in Gaza,” Gaza, 2009
2.3 Little Rock, 1957
2.4 Kufr Bir‘im
3. The Photograph as a Source of Civil Knowledge
3.1 Rafah, by Miki Kratsman, 2005
3.2 Rafah, by Miki Kratsman, 2005
3.3 Tulkarm Refugee Camp, by Nir Kafri, 2002
3.4 Sur Baher, by Keren Manor, 2007
3.5 Wadi Qaddum, East Jerusalem, by Keren Manor, March 2007
3.6 Sur Baher, East Jerusalem, by Keren Manor, 2007
3.7 Al-Tur, East Jerusalem, by Tess Scheflan, 2007
3.8 Al-Tur, East Jerusalem, by Oren Ziv, January 2007
3.9 Brazil Camp, Gaza Strip, by Miki Kratsman, 2007
3.10 Ein Beit al-Ma’ Refugee Camp, Nablus, by Miki Kratsman, 2007
3.11 Rafah, by anonymous military photographer, 2004
3.12 Al-Muqata‘a, Jenin, by Joseph Algazy, 2001
3.13 Al-Faradis village, Hebron region, by Yotam Ronen, 2008
3.14 Hebron, by Anne Paq, 2003
3.15 Anata, East Jerusalem, by Keren Manor, 2006
3.16 Jenin refugee camp, 2002
3.17 Al-Walaja village, by Keren Manor, 2007
3.18 The road from al-Ram to Ramallah, by Yotam Ronen
3.19 Al-Issawiya, East Jerusalem, by Keren Manor
3.20 Hebron, 2007
3.21 Luban al-Sharqiya, north of Ramallah, by Dafna Kaplan, 2003
3.22 Hebron, by Keren Manor, 2007
3.23 Beit Hanoun, 2004–2005
3.24 Jayyous, by Miki Kratsman, 2002
3.25 Between Qalqilya and Tulkarm, 2003
3.26 Beit Ur al-Tahta, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.27 Beit Ur al-Tahta, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.28 The separation wall around Rachel’s Tomb, Bethlehem, by Anne Paq, 2006
3.29 Year unknown
3.30 Kharbata, by Miki Kratsman, 2005
3.31 Near Anata, East Jerusalem, by Yotam Ronen, 2007
3.32 Gilo, apartheid road, by Ian Sternthal, 2005
3.33 Route 443, by Miki Kratsman, 2006
3.34 Azzun Atma, by Miki Kratsman, 2006
3.35 Azzun Atma, by Miki Kratsman, 2006
3.36 Maccabim checkpoint, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.37 Unidentified location, by Suha Zaid, 2004
3.38 Beit Liqya, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.39 Flying checkpoint, Trans-Samaria Highway, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.40 Al-Tufah checkpoint, by Nir Kafri, 2003
3.41 Huwwara checkpoint, 2003
3.42 Qalandiya checkpoint, by Yotam Ronen, 2007
3.43 Beit Furik checkpoint, 2004
3.44 Huwwara checkpoint, by Dorit Hershkowitz, 2006
3.45 Huwwara checkpoint, by Miki Kratsman, 2007
3.46 Watchtower at the entrance to Hebron, by Anne Paq, January 2006
3.47 The Erez crossing into Israel, by Nir Kafri, 2007
3.48 Suhmata, by Zoltan Kluger, June 1, 1949
4. Civil Uses of Photography
4.1 Afula, by Fred Chesnik, 1948
4.2 Al-Ramla, by Beno Rothenberg, 1948
4.3 Qalansuwa, by David Eldan, May 10, 1949
4.4 Qalansuwa, by David Eldan, May 10, 1949
4.5 Al-Quds/Jerusalem, by Ali Zaarour, 1948
4.6 Al-Ramla, by Beno Rothenberg, 1948
5. “He Is My Ancestor”—Not a Museum’s Asset
5.1 The studio where Alfred’s image was captured, redacted by the author with Yonatan Vinitsky
5.2 The studio where Papa Renty’s image was captured, redacted by the author with Yonatan Vinitsky
Epilogue
Haifa, March 31, 1947

Aisha al-Kurd and her son Yassir, photograph by Micha Kirshner, 1988
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
This introduction has been written in two different voices, both of them mine. The first one dates to 2009, the second to 2023. 1 What makes these voices different is not only the time that sets them apart, but the fact that shortly after the book was first published in English I left the Zionist colony in Palestine and came to grasp the colonization of Palestine as part of a broader imperial project. This included an understanding of the imperial origins of photography as the accumulation of visual wealth, intertwined with the enormous wealth represented in other types of objects, which had been looted from all over the world and turned into the foundations of Western-type museums. It is in those museums that many are invited to see—and show—photographs that deal with different aspects of imperial violence and its lingering effects, while this plundered wealth is still held in their basements and displayed on their walls. It is in and through these museums, among other imperially shaped sites, that this imperial anomaly and injustice persists, even when addressed through various exhibitions. It is the regime of those museums that makes them part of the national landscape in which they are situated, when what is held in them are diasporic objects that belong to the communities from which they were looted and to their inheritors, some of whom live in exile, having been driven from their homes by imperial forces. It is a civil imagination that guides my two voices here, when I am rehearsing the denormalization of this type of violence, the imperial dispossession and ownership of what belonged to others, or was produced through encounters with others.
Referring to the place where I was born not by the name that was forced on it in 1948 as the “future” of Palestine, which was made “past,” but by a phrase describing what it still is—a Zionist colony in Palestine—is a critical moment in these rehearsals. I could not refuse the name of that place, which has become also the name of an identity, if this earlier voice of civil imagination had not already been rehearsing for it. Civil imagination, though, is not a leap of imagination but rather a series of rehearsals with others. Once this place was named for what it is—a colony, a settler colony—I could rehearse with others, not only for the return of Palestinians but for the return of Palestine as a place, whose tissues of life are not woven top-down; a place with histories, ecologies, and cosmologies the enshrined opportunities of which have also been crushed—Palestine as a place of repair for both Palestinians, whose homeland was robbed from them, and for Jews who were assigned a Zionist “past” and “future” that robbed them of their diverse histories and worlds they had in different places.
I intervene in italics in the original introduction, sometimes adding variations, other times dialoguing with this former voice of mine that carries the imprint of a certain hope that the political regime of the colony could be transformed to become what Azmi Bishara called “the state of all its citizens.” The brilliance of Bishara’s political and theoretical project emanated from its simplicity. Bishara did not invoke a revolutionary imagination, calling for an anticolonial struggle that would impose top-down a “new beginning,” where those whose power allows them can also violently manipulate the body politic to fit their vision. His visionary political project was rather conceived as a total transformation of the regime from below, through the inclusion of all the governed in the body politic. Against the still-common use of the term “revolution” to refer to a liberatory project, which forgets that most revolutions were pursued by settlers, enslavers, and fascists—including the Euro-Zionist one in Palestine in 1948, which ended up creating a sovereign nation-state against the people—I join others in rehearsing civil imagination, which the colony exists to destroy, and as a Palestinian Jew, refusing to recognize myself in the identity assigned to me at birth: “Israeli.”
Again, at the center of this book is not a leap of the imagination but repetitions of what was denied to the i