• Desert Blooms

    Author(s):
    Zahid R. Chaudhary (see profile)
    Date:
    2019
    Subject(s):
    Photography, Communism, Socialism, Aesthetics
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    israel, palestine, Marxism, Visual culture
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/nt7h-yw42
    Abstract:
    This essay considers the place of abstraction in documentary photography, a genre whose primary aesthetic-political commitment is usually assumed to be on the side of figuration, denotation, and facticity. Taking up photographer Fazal Sheikh's photographic series Desert Bloom, which records natural and human-made disturbances in the Naqab/Negev desert, the essay considers artistic abstraction in relation to other forms of economic, juridical, and political abstraction critical to settler colonialism in particular and capitalism more generally. How might abstraction be the very condition of politics? What might this imply for our understandings of documentary aesthetics?
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    https://doi.org/10.1162/octo_a_00351
    Pub. Date:
    Spring 2019
    Journal:
    October
    Volume:
    168
    Page Range:
    92 - 109
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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