Leiden University Press, 2021 Paper: 978-90-8728-358-2 | eISBN: 978-94-006-0400-1 Library of Congress Classification TR183.S48 2021 Dewey Decimal Classification 100
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK A new theoretical perspective on place in photography.
Drawing on theoretical insights from geography and philosophy, Ali Shobeiri examines how six fundamentals of photography—the photographer, camera, photograph, image, spectator, and genre—manifest unique, contingent notions of “place.” The geophilosophy that emerges offers a new language for understanding how “place” encapsulates everything that invites and resists location, identity, story, function, and meaning.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Ali Shobeiri is assistant professor of photography at Leiden University. He is coeditor of Animation and Memory.
REVIEWS
“Shobeiri’s notion of ‘geophilosophy’ is an important contribution to the field. Its merits are twofold: on the one hand, it thoroughly brings together three disciplines in a very organic and convincing way; on the other hand, it also offers an excellent synthesis of the existing research on ‘place’, which serves as an echo chamber to the authors and concepts that are creatively appropriated in this work.”
— Jan Baetens, KU Leuven University
“In this lively and highly original book, Ali Shobeiri documents the many ways in which photography is all about place. Offering acute observations on everything from the photographer to the photographic image, and from the camera to the spectator, Shobeiri sets forth all the ways, major and minor, in which photography is (in his words) ‘comprised of places.’ (…) Lucidly written, this breakthrough book allows us to see that the scope and import of photography is far more extensive than we have ever imagined – and that place, the central thread of this captivating and convincing text, has been given new life through photography. The result is nothing short of the creation of a new and unique field of inquiry: the geophilosophy of photography.”
— Edward S. Casey, Stony Brook University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents Introduction Chapter One. The Photographer: A Corporeal Place in the Phenomenal World - Going for a Walk with a Lived Body - Inhabiting the World as a “lived place” - Confrontational Aesthetics of Corporeality Chapter Two. The Camera: A Place That Spatialises Time and Temporalises Space - Seeing through the Camera - An Apparatus that Lies in Wait 40The Black Box of Contingency Chapter Three. The Photograph: A Place That Lacks Its Own Emplacement - Never in a Single Location - A Placeless Place Sailing Across Different Spaces - The Vagabond Locomotion of Photographs Chapter Four. Photographic Place: Looking at the Photographic Image from Its Edge - Specificities of the Photographic Frame - Photographic Place in a Maximised Blind Field - Photographic Place in a Minimised Blind Field - Liminality of the Photographic Place Chapter Five. The Spectator: A Place That Is Sempiternally Taking Place - Place as a State of Being - “The event of photography” 98The Evental Place of Photography Chapter Six. The Genre: The Aftermath of Place - Landscape and the Agency of Place - The Spectrality of the Image - The Temporality of the Text - The Exigency of the Photographed Place Epilogue: The Geophilosophy of Photography Acknowledgments Notes References Index
Leiden University Press, 2021 Paper: 978-90-8728-358-2 eISBN: 978-94-006-0400-1
A new theoretical perspective on place in photography.
Drawing on theoretical insights from geography and philosophy, Ali Shobeiri examines how six fundamentals of photography—the photographer, camera, photograph, image, spectator, and genre—manifest unique, contingent notions of “place.” The geophilosophy that emerges offers a new language for understanding how “place” encapsulates everything that invites and resists location, identity, story, function, and meaning.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Ali Shobeiri is assistant professor of photography at Leiden University. He is coeditor of Animation and Memory.
REVIEWS
“Shobeiri’s notion of ‘geophilosophy’ is an important contribution to the field. Its merits are twofold: on the one hand, it thoroughly brings together three disciplines in a very organic and convincing way; on the other hand, it also offers an excellent synthesis of the existing research on ‘place’, which serves as an echo chamber to the authors and concepts that are creatively appropriated in this work.”
— Jan Baetens, KU Leuven University
“In this lively and highly original book, Ali Shobeiri documents the many ways in which photography is all about place. Offering acute observations on everything from the photographer to the photographic image, and from the camera to the spectator, Shobeiri sets forth all the ways, major and minor, in which photography is (in his words) ‘comprised of places.’ (…) Lucidly written, this breakthrough book allows us to see that the scope and import of photography is far more extensive than we have ever imagined – and that place, the central thread of this captivating and convincing text, has been given new life through photography. The result is nothing short of the creation of a new and unique field of inquiry: the geophilosophy of photography.”
— Edward S. Casey, Stony Brook University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents Introduction Chapter One. The Photographer: A Corporeal Place in the Phenomenal World - Going for a Walk with a Lived Body - Inhabiting the World as a “lived place” - Confrontational Aesthetics of Corporeality Chapter Two. The Camera: A Place That Spatialises Time and Temporalises Space - Seeing through the Camera - An Apparatus that Lies in Wait 40The Black Box of Contingency Chapter Three. The Photograph: A Place That Lacks Its Own Emplacement - Never in a Single Location - A Placeless Place Sailing Across Different Spaces - The Vagabond Locomotion of Photographs Chapter Four. Photographic Place: Looking at the Photographic Image from Its Edge - Specificities of the Photographic Frame - Photographic Place in a Maximised Blind Field - Photographic Place in a Minimised Blind Field - Liminality of the Photographic Place Chapter Five. The Spectator: A Place That Is Sempiternally Taking Place - Place as a State of Being - “The event of photography” 98The Evental Place of Photography Chapter Six. The Genre: The Aftermath of Place - Landscape and the Agency of Place - The Spectrality of the Image - The Temporality of the Text - The Exigency of the Photographed Place Epilogue: The Geophilosophy of Photography Acknowledgments Notes References Index
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC