A Relational Ecology of Photographic Practices: Towards a Non-anthropocentric Approach to Photography
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis argues that as photography’s technological basis has become more complex and increasingly detached from human vision, a thicker account of photographic practice that moves away from humanist discourse and single authorship can assist in demonstrating a continuity between film and new technological photographic practices. It revisits key concepts in documentary photography such as the ‘decisive moment’ through the filter of particular historical, technological and philosophical ideas that have informed the critical engagement with photography as a media of representation. It reconsiders some orthodox assumptions about photography including the idea that photography is fundamentally a human-centred practice and that photographic technology has a singular determining agency that is most often subordinated to the image. From this, the thesis attempts to factor in the material, cognitive and technical aspects that shape the photographic decision-making process as they can be observed in the relational network of elements that contribute to the final image. It then introduces new materialist theories that address non-human agencies and that have begun to force an awareness of the distribution of cognition and human action to the fore. Through a series of case studies and diffractive readings of contact sheets from professional photographic practice and production plans from a television broadcast, the collaborative relationship between the photographer, apparatus and world that co-produces the final image is made clear. This constructs a framework to understand photographic practice as a relational ecology that reveals the varying play of agencies in the collaborative meshwork between the photographer, the photographic apparatus and world during the photographic event. By emphasizing the mobility of the decision-making process in a way that helps towards an understanding of the dynamics of a collaboration it opens the way for a continuity between digital and a…
abstract: This thesis argues that as photography’s technological basis has become more complex and increasingly detached from human vision, a thicker account of photographic practice that moves away from humanist discourse and single authorship can assist in demonstrating a continuity between film and new technological photographic practices. It revisits key concepts in documentary photography such as the ‘decisive moment’ through the filter of particular historical, technological and philosophical ideas that have informed the critical engagement with photography as a media of representation. It reconsiders some orthodox assumptions about photography including the idea that photography is fundamentally a human-centred practice and that photographic technology has a singular determining agency that is most often subordinated to the image. From this, the thesis attempts to factor in the material, cognitive and technical aspects that shape the photographic decision-making process as they can be observed in the relational network of elements that contribute to the final image. It then introduces new materialist theories that address non-human agencies and that have begun to force an awareness of the distribution of cognition and human action to the fore. Through a series of case studies and diffractive readings of contact sheets from professional photographic practice and production plans from a television broadcast, the collaborative relationship between the photographer, apparatus and world that co-produces the final image is made clear. This constructs a framework to understand photographic practice as a relational ecology that reveals the varying play of agencies in the collaborative meshwork between the photographer, the photographic apparatus and world during the photographic event. By emphasizing the mobility of the decision-making process in a way that helps towards an understanding of the dynamics of a collaboration it opens the way for a continuity between digital and a…
author: Knight, Jacqueline
language: eng
keywords: Photography, Contact sheet, Decisive moment, Computational photography, Operational images, Relational ecology, Distributed human action, Distributed cognition, Photography and cognition, Photography and collaboration, New Materialism, Posthuman, Agential technology, Analogue film photography, Photography and agency, Meshworks of collaboration, Ecologies of practice, Photographic apparatus, Photographic dispositif, Digital image capture
date published: 2021-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:50:10Z
provider: University of Plymouth
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Plymouth