The millions whose photographs are taken are not referred to in the histories and theories of photography. From an early stage, it was assumed that the people photographed provided the resources and the cheap or free labor for the large-scale photographic enterprise. In this fourth part of the Unlearning Decisive Moments of Photographyseries, Ariella Azoulay looks at photographers as cultural agents of imperialism.
In the first part of the series Unlearning Decisive Moments of Photography, Ariella Azoulay urges us to unlearn the knowledge that calls upon us to account for photography as having its own origins, histories, practices, or futures, and to explore it as part of the imperial world that we operate in.
The case of Thomas Guénolé concerns us as antiracist and anticolonialist Jews because he represents a worrying tendency in leftist political thought, particularly in France.
