Photography and Collaboration From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing

Photography and Collaboration offers a fresh perspective on existing debates in art photography and on the act of photography in general. Unlike conventional accounts that celebrate individual photographers and their personal visions, this book investigates the idea that authorship in photography is often more complex and multiple than we imagine – involving not only various forms of partnership between photographers, but also an astonishing array of relationships with photographed subjects and viewers. Thematic chapters explore the increasing prevalence of collaborative approaches to photography among a broad range of international artists – from conceptual practices in the 1960s to the most recent digital manifestations. Positioning contemporary work in a broader historical and theoretical context, the book reveals that collaboration is an overlooked but essential dimension of the medium’s development and potential.

Introduction1. Ideologies of Photographic Authorship2. Impersonal Evidence: Photography as Readymade3. Collaborative Documents: Photography in the Name of Community4. Relational Portraiture: Photography as Social Encounter5. Aggregated Authorship: Found Photography and Social NetworksConclusionBibliographyIndex

Daniel Palmer is Associate Dean of Graduate Research and Associate Professor in the Art History and Theory Program at Monash University, Australia. He was formerly a Curator at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, Australia.

Photography and Collaboration offers a fresh perspective on existing debates in art photography and on the act of photography in general. Unlike conventional accounts that celebrate individual photographers and their personal visions, this book investigates the idea that authorship in photography is often more complex and multiple than we imagine – involving not only various forms of partnership between photographers, but also an astonishing array of relationships with photographed subjects and viewers.

Thematic chapters explore the increasing prevalence of collaborative approaches to photography among a broad range of international artists – from conceptual practices in the 1960s to the most recent digital manifestations. Positioning contemporary work in a broader historical and theoretical context, the book reveals that collaboration is an overlooked but essential dimension of the medium's development and potential.