Photography and Migration

Description

Written in the context of unprecedented dislocation and a global refugee crisis this edited volume thinks through photography’s long and complex relationship to human migration. While contemporary media images largely frame migration in terms of trauma victimhood and pity so much more can be said of photography’s role in the movement of people around the world. Cameras can document enable or control human movement across geographical cultural and political divides. Their operators put faces on forced and voluntary migrations making visible hardships and suffering as well as opportunity and optimism. Photographers include migrating subjects who take pictures for their own consumption not for international recognition. And photographs themselves migrate with their makers subjects and viewers as the very concept of photography takes on new functions and meanings. Photography and Migration places into conversation media images and other photographs that the contributors have witnessed collected or created through their diverse national regional and local contexts. Developed across thirteen chapters this conversation encompasses images histories and testimonies offering analysis of new perspectives on photography and migration today.