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Dr. Daniel Rubinstein

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, MA Photography, Faculty Member

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Dr Daniel Rubinstein is Reader in Philosophy and the Image at Central Saint Martins, where he teaches the PhD research seminar ‘The Art of Questioning’ and leads the Masters Degree in Contemporary Photography; Practices and Philosophies. Underpinned by multifaceted engagement with the entanglement of images politics and aesthetics, his work examines the digital image within the context of networked and mediated urban environments. He is the editor of the journal "Philosophy of Photography".
n 2019 he edited an anthology for Routledge titled ‘Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in the Digital Age’. The question that he is currently working on is the way in which in the 21st Century photography emerges as a new art form that merges philosophy, media technologies and visual aesthetics. A collection of his essays ‘Philosophie nach der Fotografie’ will be published in German by Merve Verlag. The translated title is ‘Philosophy after Photography’.

Research interests: Media Arts, Post-representational Photography, Visual Art, Critical Theories of Networked Cultures, Contemporary Aesthetic Theory and practice, Translations of reality into zeros and ones.

Course leader MA Contemporary Photography; Practices and Philosophies at Central Saint Martins
Founding editor of the journal "Philosophy of Photography"
Address: Dr. Daniel Rubinstein
Course Leader, MA Photography
University of the Arts London
Central Saint Martins
Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA, United Kingdom

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Papers by Dr. Daniel Rubinstein

"A knife without a blade, for which a handle is missing"; on the pleasure of photographic violence

Philosophy of Photography, 2023

In the evening of 19 th December 2016, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey was attending an opening ... more

Keeping up with the Cartesians: on the culture of the selfie with continual reference to Kim Kardashian

Both the analogue and the digital snapshot still belong to the industrial age in which the greate... more Both the analogue and the digital snapshot still belong to the industrial age in which the greatest threat to humanity was the man-machine hybrid – the Frankenstein's monster who turns on his own maker. But as the online philosopher Kim Kardashian teaches by inviting us to look at her through touching, pinching, and swiping, the man-machine paradigm is now replaced by wo/man-image. This is not only a change in the status of the image, it is also, and for the most part, a change in the status of 'man'.

Photography after Philosophy

The Handbook of Photography Studies, 2020

Both photography and philosophy are invested in light as a form of intelligence, but while repres... more Both photography and philosophy are invested in light as a form of intelligence, but while representation is central to photography as a recording practice, for Heidegger it is fundamental to the alienation of human beings from the world, and for Deleuze it is the foundation of political conservatism. This chapter brings together these critiques of representation and demonstrates that photography is both the visual form of Western metaphysics and the means for overcoming the boundaries imposed by the representational paradigm. It is argued that far from being rooted in ‘objectivity’, photography is usually interpreted through a philosophical framework that imposes upon it the concomitant ideologies of subjectivity and realism. It further contends that when photography is liberated from the totalizing effects of representation it begins to offer a fractured and fragmented ‘image’ of the interface between current technical, social and cultural norms

The Diogenes complex

The Sublime in Everyday Life, 2020

What is 21st Century Photography

Commissioned by The Photographers' Gallery, in this essay Rubinstein answers "one of pho... more

The assassination of experience by photography

Philosophy of Photography, 2020

This article suggests that when the engagement with photography is limited to questions of recogn... more This article suggests that when the engagement with photography is limited to questions of recognition and resemblance, such approach stifles our experience of the world and directs us towards monotonous homogeneity in which everything can be represented in a photograph, and a photograph is always a representation of something or other. And yet, a photograph has the potential to move our gaze beyond representation of events and situations in a way that allows us to penetrate the appearance of things and to sense their inner reality, rather than act as a mere illustration.

Fractal photography and the politics of invisibility

The Routledge Companion to Photography Theory, 2019

Gift of the Selfie

This essay examines the philosophical and critical ramifications of the culture of the selfie.

Graven images: photography after Heidegger, Lyotard and Deleuze

This chapter connects Heidegger’s critique of identity and metaphysics with his later work on the... more This chapter connects Heidegger’s critique of identity and metaphysics with his later work on the question of technology to propose that photography, understood as an image making technology, provides a privileged point of entry into the question of ontological difference. The work of Lyotard and Deleuze, while not directly engaging with photography, seems to be pointing in this direction. My assertion is that the ‘step back’ out of metaphysics does not proceed by way of language (as Heidegger would have it) but by the way of the technical image. For this reason, photography is the visual counterpart of non-representational thinking. This paper argues that Heidegger’s inability to exit metaphysics is tied to his failure to recognise that such a leap is accomplished by means of an automata, or technology that is capable of mimetic expression. The understanding of photography as the poetic expression of techne, implies that photography is the ‘graven image’ of the age of cybernetics a...

Philosophie nach der Fotografie (Philosophy after Photography)

This single authored book examines the purchase of photography on contemporary continental philos... more This single authored book examines the purchase of photography on contemporary continental philosophy. Its core argument is that because photography is at one and the same time an image and ephemera (ready-made), it is the ontological foundation of post-phenomenological philosophy that privileges experience over and above theoretical and critical engagement with the arts.

Nothing to see here: Fractal Photography and the politics of invisibility

In what follows I wish to argue that in the twenty-first century the importance of photography is... more In what follows I wish to argue that in the twenty-first century the importance of photography is not in freezing moments in time, nor in portraying situations and individual points of view, but in exposing the inherent contradictions of structures that take representation as their ground. As representation is one of the building blocks of our culture, from the political order (representational democracy), to economics (money represents assets and labor) to science (theories and laws represent real-world systems), photography provides an insight into its abyssal paradoxes, precisely because it configures the very space of the visual. Photography is fundamental to the transition from the industrial to the information age because it allows to think about power not as the reactive logic of ideology, but as the fractal and self-referential process by which information and knowledge are produced, distributed and utilized. For this reason, the question for this chapter is not how individu...

What is twenty-first-century photography?

Philosophy of Photography, 2016

Post-representational Photography, or the Grin of Schrödinger’s Cat

Photography Reframed, 2018

The famous quantum physics experiment &#39;Schrödinger&#39;s cat&#39; suggests that s... more The famous quantum physics experiment &#39;Schrödinger&#39;s cat&#39; suggests that some situations are undecidable, i.e. they exist outside of the normative distinctions between &#39;truth&#39; and &#39;false&#39; because both states can co-exist under certain conditions. This paper suggests that photography has very close links with this state of affairs, because photography allows one to move from the world of certainty into the quantum dimension of undecidability and indeterminate states.

Failure to Engage: Art Criticism in the Age of Simulacrum

Journal of Visual Culture, 2017

In this article, the author explores the metaphysical underpinnings of Fried’s Art and Objecthood... more In this article, the author explores the metaphysical underpinnings of Fried’s Art and Objecthood (1998[1967]) in order to tease out its reliance on several of the tenets of conservative art criticism: Plato’s theory of forms, Kant’s aesthetics and the unquestioning acceptance of subjectivity and representation. He argues that it is due to these investments that Art and Objecthood fails to come to terms with the condition of art in the age of advanced technology and virtual (simulated) reality. This argument develops by means of clarification of three key concepts: simulacrum, theatricality and truth.

Discourse in a coma; A comment on a comma in the title of Jean-François Lyotard’s Discourse, Figure

Philosophy of Photography, 2013

The New Paradigm

Preface to the book 'Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in the Digital Age'. This bo... more Preface to the book 'Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in the Digital Age'. This book is about the formation of a discourse on images that has been waiting in the wings for some time. A wider context for the emergence of this discourse is the crumbling of a system of thought that is called metaphysics. That this linear and historical model of comprehending the world is being replaced by a new paradigm ushered in by a constellation of accelerated developments that can be variously described as ‘algorithmic’, ‘ecological’, ‘new-materialist’, ‘fragmented’ and ‘holistic’ is generally recognized. What is less well understood is how this departure from the representational discourse affects the photographic image. A belief still lingers in the ability of the photograph to represent people, events and situations, in its power to aid recognition, memory, description and archiving, as if these powers can be retained independently from the new discursive practices that are drive...

On The Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representation

From publisher's description: "On The Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representatio... more From publisher's description: "On The Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representation" is a provocative and bold rethinking of photography in light of the digital transformation and its impact on art, culture and society. Addressing the centrality of the digital image to our contemporary life, the fourteen new essays in this collection challenge the traditional categories of photographic theory – that of representation, evidence, documentation and the archive – and offer a fresh approach to its impact on aesthetics, contemporary philosophy and the political. Drawing on the networked human condition of embodiment, social media and bio-politics, 'On the Verge of Photography' offers an invaluable resource for students of visual culture, researches in the field of digital imaging and artists working with new media. Rubinstein, Golding and Fisher co-edited this volume.

Techniques of The Self; On the art of Cindy Sherman from Untitled Film Stills to Instagram

Considered as a whole, Sherman's project touches on three interlinked dimensions of contempor... more Considered as a whole, Sherman's project touches on three interlinked dimensions of contemporary existence: first, it puts forward a conception of time appropriate to the accelerated tempo of instant communication and new media. Second it grasps the image as a sensation rather than a representation, and third is the insight that the notion of an individual as autonomous and independent is incompatible with the development of new media, the culture of the selfie and Instagram. What follows is an outline of these qualities of Sherman's art.

Notes on the Margins of Metadata; Concerning the Undecidability of the Digital Image

In this paper we consider the significance of metadata in relation to image economy of the web. S... more In this paper we consider the significance of metadata in relation to image economy of the web. Social practices such as keywording, tagging, rating and viewing increasingly influence the modes of navigation and hence the utility of images in online environments. To a user faced with an avalanche of images, metadata promises to make photographs machine readable in order to mobilize new knowledge, in a continuation of the archival paradigm. At the same time, metadata enables new topologies of the image, new temporalities and multiplicities which present a challenge to historical models of representation. As photography becomes an encoded discourse, we suggest that the turning away from the visual towards the mathematical and the algorithmic establishes undecidability as a key property of the networked image.

The Diogenes complex: sublime living in irrational times

The Sublime in Everyday LIfe, 2021

From Kant to postmodernism the idea of the sublime was always tied with questions of ethics and p... more From Kant to postmodernism the idea of the sublime was always tied with questions of ethics and politics. Kant saw the sublime as a proof that rationality triumphs over nature, validating law and judgement through the subjective experience of pleasure and pain. Lyotard saw in the sublime a symptom of a crisis, at which rationality reaches its limit, and subjectivity is confronted with its own collapse. As this chapter will show, both these approaches are inadequate to account for the sublime in 21st century. The failure of liberal democracy and the rise of populist and fascist ideologies calls for a re-evaluation of the sublime as the dissolution of the symbolic order and the coming face to face with the alternative reality of the death drive. This chapter names this reality 'The Diogenes Complex', after the homeless beggar who made his form of existence the manifestation of his philosophical creed. Through his performative actions Diogenes has shown that reality is sublime because it is irreconcilable with rational logic and warned against the futility of trying to act rationally in irrational times.

"A knife without a blade, for which a handle is missing"; on the pleasure of photographic violence

Philosophy of Photography, 2023

In the evening of 19 th December 2016, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey was attending an opening ... more

Keeping up with the Cartesians: on the culture of the selfie with continual reference to Kim Kardashian

Both the analogue and the digital snapshot still belong to the industrial age in which the greate... more Both the analogue and the digital snapshot still belong to the industrial age in which the greatest threat to humanity was the man-machine hybrid – the Frankenstein's monster who turns on his own maker. But as the online philosopher Kim Kardashian teaches by inviting us to look at her through touching, pinching, and swiping, the man-machine paradigm is now replaced by wo/man-image. This is not only a change in the status of the image, it is also, and for the most part, a change in the status of 'man'.

Photography after Philosophy

The Handbook of Photography Studies, 2020

Both photography and philosophy are invested in light as a form of intelligence, but while repres... more Both photography and philosophy are invested in light as a form of intelligence, but while representation is central to photography as a recording practice, for Heidegger it is fundamental to the alienation of human beings from the world, and for Deleuze it is the foundation of political conservatism. This chapter brings together these critiques of representation and demonstrates that photography is both the visual form of Western metaphysics and the means for overcoming the boundaries imposed by the representational paradigm. It is argued that far from being rooted in ‘objectivity’, photography is usually interpreted through a philosophical framework that imposes upon it the concomitant ideologies of subjectivity and realism. It further contends that when photography is liberated from the totalizing effects of representation it begins to offer a fractured and fragmented ‘image’ of the interface between current technical, social and cultural norms

The Diogenes complex

The Sublime in Everyday Life, 2020

What is 21st Century Photography

Commissioned by The Photographers' Gallery, in this essay Rubinstein answers "one of pho... more

The assassination of experience by photography

Philosophy of Photography, 2020

This article suggests that when the engagement with photography is limited to questions of recogn... more This article suggests that when the engagement with photography is limited to questions of recognition and resemblance, such approach stifles our experience of the world and directs us towards monotonous homogeneity in which everything can be represented in a photograph, and a photograph is always a representation of something or other. And yet, a photograph has the potential to move our gaze beyond representation of events and situations in a way that allows us to penetrate the appearance of things and to sense their inner reality, rather than act as a mere illustration.

Fractal photography and the politics of invisibility

The Routledge Companion to Photography Theory, 2019

Gift of the Selfie

This essay examines the philosophical and critical ramifications of the culture of the selfie.

Graven images: photography after Heidegger, Lyotard and Deleuze

This chapter connects Heidegger’s critique of identity and metaphysics with his later work on the... more This chapter connects Heidegger’s critique of identity and metaphysics with his later work on the question of technology to propose that photography, understood as an image making technology, provides a privileged point of entry into the question of ontological difference. The work of Lyotard and Deleuze, while not directly engaging with photography, seems to be pointing in this direction. My assertion is that the ‘step back’ out of metaphysics does not proceed by way of language (as Heidegger would have it) but by the way of the technical image. For this reason, photography is the visual counterpart of non-representational thinking. This paper argues that Heidegger’s inability to exit metaphysics is tied to his failure to recognise that such a leap is accomplished by means of an automata, or technology that is capable of mimetic expression. The understanding of photography as the poetic expression of techne, implies that photography is the ‘graven image’ of the age of cybernetics a...

Philosophie nach der Fotografie (Philosophy after Photography)

This single authored book examines the purchase of photography on contemporary continental philos... more This single authored book examines the purchase of photography on contemporary continental philosophy. Its core argument is that because photography is at one and the same time an image and ephemera (ready-made), it is the ontological foundation of post-phenomenological philosophy that privileges experience over and above theoretical and critical engagement with the arts.

Nothing to see here: Fractal Photography and the politics of invisibility

In what follows I wish to argue that in the twenty-first century the importance of photography is... more In what follows I wish to argue that in the twenty-first century the importance of photography is not in freezing moments in time, nor in portraying situations and individual points of view, but in exposing the inherent contradictions of structures that take representation as their ground. As representation is one of the building blocks of our culture, from the political order (representational democracy), to economics (money represents assets and labor) to science (theories and laws represent real-world systems), photography provides an insight into its abyssal paradoxes, precisely because it configures the very space of the visual. Photography is fundamental to the transition from the industrial to the information age because it allows to think about power not as the reactive logic of ideology, but as the fractal and self-referential process by which information and knowledge are produced, distributed and utilized. For this reason, the question for this chapter is not how individu...

What is twenty-first-century photography?

Philosophy of Photography, 2016

Post-representational Photography, or the Grin of Schrödinger’s Cat

Photography Reframed, 2018

The famous quantum physics experiment &#39;Schrödinger&#39;s cat&#39; suggests that s... more The famous quantum physics experiment &#39;Schrödinger&#39;s cat&#39; suggests that some situations are undecidable, i.e. they exist outside of the normative distinctions between &#39;truth&#39; and &#39;false&#39; because both states can co-exist under certain conditions. This paper suggests that photography has very close links with this state of affairs, because photography allows one to move from the world of certainty into the quantum dimension of undecidability and indeterminate states.

Failure to Engage: Art Criticism in the Age of Simulacrum

Journal of Visual Culture, 2017

In this article, the author explores the metaphysical underpinnings of Fried’s Art and Objecthood... more In this article, the author explores the metaphysical underpinnings of Fried’s Art and Objecthood (1998[1967]) in order to tease out its reliance on several of the tenets of conservative art criticism: Plato’s theory of forms, Kant’s aesthetics and the unquestioning acceptance of subjectivity and representation. He argues that it is due to these investments that Art and Objecthood fails to come to terms with the condition of art in the age of advanced technology and virtual (simulated) reality. This argument develops by means of clarification of three key concepts: simulacrum, theatricality and truth.

Discourse in a coma; A comment on a comma in the title of Jean-François Lyotard’s Discourse, Figure

Philosophy of Photography, 2013

The New Paradigm

Preface to the book 'Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in the Digital Age'. This bo... more Preface to the book 'Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in the Digital Age'. This book is about the formation of a discourse on images that has been waiting in the wings for some time. A wider context for the emergence of this discourse is the crumbling of a system of thought that is called metaphysics. That this linear and historical model of comprehending the world is being replaced by a new paradigm ushered in by a constellation of accelerated developments that can be variously described as ‘algorithmic’, ‘ecological’, ‘new-materialist’, ‘fragmented’ and ‘holistic’ is generally recognized. What is less well understood is how this departure from the representational discourse affects the photographic image. A belief still lingers in the ability of the photograph to represent people, events and situations, in its power to aid recognition, memory, description and archiving, as if these powers can be retained independently from the new discursive practices that are drive...

On The Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representation

From publisher's description: "On The Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representatio... more From publisher's description: "On The Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representation" is a provocative and bold rethinking of photography in light of the digital transformation and its impact on art, culture and society. Addressing the centrality of the digital image to our contemporary life, the fourteen new essays in this collection challenge the traditional categories of photographic theory – that of representation, evidence, documentation and the archive – and offer a fresh approach to its impact on aesthetics, contemporary philosophy and the political. Drawing on the networked human condition of embodiment, social media and bio-politics, 'On the Verge of Photography' offers an invaluable resource for students of visual culture, researches in the field of digital imaging and artists working with new media. Rubinstein, Golding and Fisher co-edited this volume.

Techniques of The Self; On the art of Cindy Sherman from Untitled Film Stills to Instagram

Considered as a whole, Sherman's project touches on three interlinked dimensions of contempor... more Considered as a whole, Sherman's project touches on three interlinked dimensions of contemporary existence: first, it puts forward a conception of time appropriate to the accelerated tempo of instant communication and new media. Second it grasps the image as a sensation rather than a representation, and third is the insight that the notion of an individual as autonomous and independent is incompatible with the development of new media, the culture of the selfie and Instagram. What follows is an outline of these qualities of Sherman's art.

Notes on the Margins of Metadata; Concerning the Undecidability of the Digital Image

In this paper we consider the significance of metadata in relation to image economy of the web. S... more In this paper we consider the significance of metadata in relation to image economy of the web. Social practices such as keywording, tagging, rating and viewing increasingly influence the modes of navigation and hence the utility of images in online environments. To a user faced with an avalanche of images, metadata promises to make photographs machine readable in order to mobilize new knowledge, in a continuation of the archival paradigm. At the same time, metadata enables new topologies of the image, new temporalities and multiplicities which present a challenge to historical models of representation. As photography becomes an encoded discourse, we suggest that the turning away from the visual towards the mathematical and the algorithmic establishes undecidability as a key property of the networked image.

The Diogenes complex: sublime living in irrational times

The Sublime in Everyday LIfe, 2021

From Kant to postmodernism the idea of the sublime was always tied with questions of ethics and p... more From Kant to postmodernism the idea of the sublime was always tied with questions of ethics and politics. Kant saw the sublime as a proof that rationality triumphs over nature, validating law and judgement through the subjective experience of pleasure and pain. Lyotard saw in the sublime a symptom of a crisis, at which rationality reaches its limit, and subjectivity is confronted with its own collapse. As this chapter will show, both these approaches are inadequate to account for the sublime in 21st century. The failure of liberal democracy and the rise of populist and fascist ideologies calls for a re-evaluation of the sublime as the dissolution of the symbolic order and the coming face to face with the alternative reality of the death drive. This chapter names this reality 'The Diogenes Complex', after the homeless beggar who made his form of existence the manifestation of his philosophical creed. Through his performative actions Diogenes has shown that reality is sublime because it is irreconcilable with rational logic and warned against the futility of trying to act rationally in irrational times.

How Photography Changed Philosophy

How Photography Changed Philosophy, 2022

By analysing the philosophical lineage of notions of representation, time, being, light, exposure... more By analysing the philosophical lineage of notions of representation, time, being, light, exposure, image, and truth, this book argues that photography is the visual manifestation of the philosophical account of how humans encounter beings in the present.

Daniel Rubinstein argues that traditional understandings of photography are determined by the notions of verisimilitude and representation, and this limits our understanding of photographic materiality. It is suggested that the photographic image must be closely read not for the objects, events and situations represented in it, but for the insights it affords into the structure of contemporary consciousness.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in photography, media studies, philosophy, fine art, and art history.

On the Verge of Photography: Non-representational Imaging

From the back cover: On the Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representation is a provocative ... more From the back cover: On the Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representation is a provocative and bold rethinking of photography in light of the digital transformation and its impact on fine art, culture and society. Addressing the centrality of the digital image to our contemporary life, the fourteen new essays in this collection challenge the traditional categories of photographic theory - that of representation, evidence, documentation and the archive - and offer a fresh approach to its impact on aesthetics, contemporary philosophy and the political. Drawing on the networked human condition of embodiment, social-media, and bio-politics, On the Verge of Photography offers an invaluable resource for sutdents of visual culture, researchers in the field of digital imagining and artists working with new media. Reading this extraordinary book, it becomes clear that so much of what we knew or thought we knew about photography is at one and the same time accurate and obsolete. With digital photography the image can no longer be discussed or defined for what is it is conventionally assumed to be - a distinct visual unit. This is not a crisis, claim the editors of this timely volume, but an opportunity to step away from the representational terminology that has over-determined the discourse of photography in order to address the image&#39;s actual modes of being and becoming: being digitally-born, constantly transmitted, mutated and shared. When images are &#39;digitally networked&#39; they cannot be isolated as viewed as distinct or unique. This book is a must read for anyone who shares with the authors collected in it an urge to acknowledge the contemporary image as a kind of living organism that intervenes int eh world we share not only by and through the ways we share them. -- Ariella Azoulay, Media/Comparative Literature and Modern Culture Brown University

Daniel Rubinstein 1 Preface: The New Paradigm

Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in Digital Age, 2019

This book is about the formation of a discourse on images that has been waiting in the wings for ... more This book is about the formation of a discourse on images that has been waiting in the wings for some time. A wider context for the emergence of this discourse is the crumbling of a system of thought that is called metaphysics. That this linear and historical model of comprehending the world is being replaced by a new paradigm ushered in by a constellation of accelerated developments that can be variously described as ‘algorithmic’, ‘ecological’, ‘new-materialist’, ‘fragmented’ and ‘holistic’ is generally recognized. What is less well understood is how this departure from the representational discourse affects the photographic image. A belief still lingers in the ability of the photograph to represent people, events and situations, in its power to aid recognition, memory, description and archiving, as if these powers can be retained independently from the new discursive practices that are driven by algorithmic, neurological and quantum models.

On The Verge of Photography; Imaging Beyond Representation

"On the Verge of Photography; Imaging Beyond Representation" is a provocative and bold rethinking... more "On the Verge of Photography; Imaging Beyond Representation" is a provocative and bold rethinking of photography in light of the digital transformation and its impact on fine art, culture and society. Addressing the centrality of the digital image to our contemporary life, the fourteen new essays in this collection challenge the traditional categories of photographic theory – that of representation, evidence, documentation and the archive – and offer a fresh approach to its impact on aesthetics, contemporary philosophy and the political. Drawing on the networked human condition of embodiment, social-media and bio-politics, "On the Verge of Photography" is an invaluable resource for students of visual culture, researchers in the field of digital imaging and artists working with new media.

Philosophy of Photography

Philosophy of Photography is an international peer-reviewed journal published six monthly in the ... more Philosophy of Photography is an international peer-reviewed journal published six monthly in the spring and autumn. The journal’s aim is to provide a forum for theoretical and critical debate of issues arising from the historical, political, cultural, scientific and critical matrix of ideas, practices and techniques that constitute photography as a multifaceted and changing form.

In a contemporary context characterised by its diversity and rapid rate of transformation, the conjunction of ‘philosophy’ and ‘photography’ in the journal’s title is intended to provoke reflection on the ways in which existing and emergent discourses might engage with each other to inform our understanding of the photographic.

What is 21st Century Photography (or how to survive in the age of post-truth, post-brexit and pre-Trump)

We can no longer entertain the dream of progress, gentleness and civility gradually increasing. I... more

Philosophy of the Digital Image

Philosophy of the Digital Image – Course Outline This 8-week course runs Tuesdays 26 Jan - 15 Ma... more Philosophy of the Digital Image – Course Outline

This 8-week course runs Tuesdays 26 Jan - 15 March 2016, 18.30 - 20.00

Philosophy of the Digital Image, led by Dr Daniel Rubinstein, follows the interlaced paths of contemporary philosophy and photography. Starting from Martin Heidegger’s seminal lecture The Age of the World Picture, it traces the digital image and the associated ideas of the network, big data, snapchat and selfies through the works of Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze & Guattari, Mandelbrot and Haraway among others.

The course will aim to propose a visual framework for thinking philosophically about the photographic image and for thinking photographically about philosophy.
The course is structured around a weekly reading of a key text that will be explored and illuminated during the lecture that will last approximately one hour. The second part of every session will be dedicated to discussion and questions and answers.

OUTLINE

WEEK 1: WHY PHILOSOPHY?
Introduction to the series
Photography: Visual regime of modernity
The inherent complexity of the digital image
The interlacing of technology and philosophy

WEEK 2: THE CONCEPT OF REPRESENTATION
Heidegger: The Age of the World Picture

WEEK 3: THE CONCEPT OF DATA
Reading: Gilles Deleuze: Postscript on Societies of Control

WEEK 4: THE CONCEPT OF EVENT
Reading: J-F Lyotard: ‘The Sublime and the Avant-Guard’

WEEK 5: INTRODUCTION TO A NON-FASCIST LIFE
Reading: Michel Foucault: Preface in Anti-Oedipus (xi-xv)
Watching: Leni Riefenstahl Triumph of the Will (1935)

WEEK 6: THE CONCEPT OF REPETITION
Deleuze and Guattari Of the Refrain in The Thousand Platueaus (310-351)

WEEK 7: ALGORITHMS, UNDECIDABILITY, CHAOS
Read: Luciana Parisi, Incomputable objects in the age of the Algorithm’ in ‘Contagious Architecture’ (1-81)

WEEK 8: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE POST-HUMAN
Read: Claire Colebrook ‘Framing the End of the Species: Images without Bodies’ in ‘Death of the Post-Human’ (9-29)

Five untimely meditations on the current state of the image

Dr Daniel Rubinstein's talk at the opening of NEW WEAPONS exhibition in Blitz Gallery, Malta. The... more

Shrinkage of Representation in Arctic Explorers

This paper suggests that understood correctly photography is not a representation of reality but ... more This paper suggests that understood correctly photography is not a representation of reality but a representation of representation. Not one, but two degrees of separation from the real cause photography to be the visual manifestation of the logic of pataphysics as developed by Alfred Jarry. Conceived from within the parameters of absurdist poetics photography is able to break through the metaphysical sound barrier and inhabit the space at the edge of the known universe where the visible is not bound by the limitations of human vision but opens itself up to the possibilities of invisible and unknowable material presence. What might come as a surprise is that this type of post-metaphysical image making was already practiced by 19th Century photographers, particularly during doomed arctic expeditions rife with self-cannibalism, madness and hypothermia. As this paper will go on to suggest, in such conditions photography can become detached from its degenerative role as a second rate replacement to the real and become emancipated to take on a reality of its own.

Tagging; the undecidable image

Tagging makes the meaning of an image radically undecidable while at the same time putting the po... more Tagging makes the meaning of an image radically undecidable while at the same time putting the political responsibility for the image at the hands of the user, not of the photographer. Undecidability rescues the image from the burden of representation, for the image does not stand in a necessary relation to an object or an event. Instead of being an 'image of something' and therefore conferring to an external law of representation, the image is just an object among objects, not abiding to the sovereignty of vision and not standing in for some idea of truth, or a slice of time. Its meaning is purely the sum of decisions made by human and non-human actors through an infinite process of remaking, re-staging and replicating.

Photographs, Networks, Computers

The trans-disciplinary field of contemporary photography covers a range of practices from social ... more The trans-disciplinary field of contemporary photography covers a range of practices from social geography to generic cloning, to experimental CGI and physics. This talk suggests that the field of photography has to be rethought away from being predominately engaged with images and representation to include a broader field of concerns with new and emerging forms of visuality.

Tagging and Sequencing

This talk attempts to think the photographic image away from the familiar representational paradi... more This talk attempts to think the photographic image away from the familiar representational paradigms with their insistence on image/object dualism and linear conception of time. Against these traditional conceptions of the photograph as technical image, this talk suggests that networked photography has to be understood acoustically, as a kind of rhythmic sequence that operates through pattern creation, self-replication and sensual logic that contributes to the slippage of meaning. Drawing on several examples from vernacular photography this talk proposes to consider the network as radically different photographic environment.

The Grin of Schrödinger's Cat; Quantum Photography and the limits of Representation

The Cynic's guide to Political Practice

It is strange to live at a time when political liberalism and democracy are seeking new and more ... more It is strange to live at a time when political liberalism and democracy are seeking new and more imaginative ways of damaging and even destroying themselves. Key preoccupations of liberalism are being employed specifically to undermine and discredit cultural pluralism and to advance new forms of nationalism and racism aimed at repressing the very 'other' that is the focus and the concern of progressive politics. One by one all of the staples of liberalism – such as class, gender, sexuality, race, faith, the body, diversity and identity – are being weaponised not to advance inclusion and tolerance but in order to promote the interests of specific groups, whether these are white supremacists, misogynistic gamers, autocratic nationalists or pro-life activists. In this hall of mirrors, the 'other' is no longer the LGBTQ, the black, or the woman, rather it is the defender of white masculinity, the protester against the demolition of confederate statues, and the born again Evangelical Christian.

Call for Papers: 10th Anniversary issue of Philosophy of Photography

The editors of Philosophy of Photography invite contributions to a landmark issue anticipating te... more The editors of Philosophy of Photography invite contributions to a landmark issue anticipating ten years of the journal's publication. In the autumn of 2018 we will publish POP9.2, marking the last volume of the journal to be numbered in single figures. Philosophy of Photography was launched in 2010 in answer to the need for a rigorous forum for the examination of intellectual, political and cultural issues arising from photography. Through the work of our many contributors, the support of our subscribers and the efforts of an expanding editorial team we believe we have achieved this. But as we approach a second decade, the future of Philosophy of Photography must be to make use of this platform to imagine and to interrogate the urgent questions that face anyone attempting to understand the visual forms of the contemporary world. So, to celebrate the end of our first decade and to anticipate our second we invite the following: • Articles (between 6-8000 words) on any aspect of image culture, but especially the intersection between images and contemporary questions of politics and science. • Shorter, discursive essays or commentaries (2000-4000) focusing either on themes of contemporary importance or on topics neglected by mainstream photography scholarship. • We are also interested in receiving contributions (between 2-3000 words) to our Encyclopaedia section, which offers a space to unpack and to interrogate a specific idea, term, technology or process across the production and reception of historical, contemporary and emerging photographic operations. For inclusion in the autumn issue (POP9.2) the full text of submissions should reach us by no later than August 10 th. Philosophy of Photography has sought to expand understanding of the ways images work and has done so in contexts ranging from biology to nuclear physics and from surveillance to conceptual art. In the process we have published many things that would not normally feature in the pages of an academic journal nor in the mainstream photography press. We welcome inquiries from researchers and practitioners who seek to explore any aspect of photography from a theoretical standpoint. We invite submissions that attempt to rethink the character and place of visuality in all of its mechanical, existential and biological dimensions. Much has changed in the last decade. New questions have emerged and existing challenges have mutated. How, for instance, are we to understand, analyse and resist cynical modes of populism and the threat of alt-right politics on visualizations of the present? What are the contemporary roles of imaging in a climate of persistent military conflict and the massive population displacements this produces? What is to be made of the increasing penetration of social media into everyday life and the intensification of efforts to capitalize on this phenomenon? How to respond to demands for the renewal of critically oriented philosophical analyses of such issues and to counter-currents such as the emergence of 'new materialisms'? What forms of imagination are needed in order to understand the compounded relationships that pertain between these and further questions of technology and culture, political and theoretical possibility? This call for papers asks for contributions to Philosophy of Photography that set out to explore the significance and respond to the urgency of such markers of the volatile present. Philosophy of Photography is an international peer-reviewed journal published six monthly in the spring and autumn. It is a forum of theoretical and critical debate arising from the historical, political, cultural, scientific and critical matrix of ideas, practices and techniques

A Life More Photographic, Mapping the Networked Image

Cynic's guide to political philosophy