Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography

A revolutionary history of photography from a stellar team of writers and thinkers that challenges all existing narratives by focusing on the complex collaborations between photographer and subject. This groundbreaking and multifaceted history explores photography through the lens of collaboration, and in so doing challenges the dominant narratives around photographic history and authorship. Led by five of photography’s great thinkers and practitioners, it breaks apart the ‘single creator’ tradition by bringing to light tangible traces of collaboration – the various relationships, exchanges and interactions which occur between all participants in the event of photography.

Over 115 photography projects are surveyed in eight thematic chapters, and presented non-hierarchically alongside quotes, testimonies and concise texts by guest contributors. These networks of texts and images provide perspective on a vast array of photographic themes, from Araki’s provocative portraits of women to archival files from the Spanish Civil War. With more than 550 photographs and over 100 text contributors, Collaboration is an inspiration for teaching and an open invitation to scholars, activists, photographers and others to practice always with and alongside others, and to participate actively in this engagement and enquiry.