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Commons and crowds: figuring photography from above and below

This essay offers a critical engagement with contemporary photography from the perspective of recent debates in critical theory concerned with the politics of globalisation. It providess a significant reassessment of the photography that held sway during the 1990s and argues for another approach. It suggests that much contemporary photography offers a contradictory version of a crowd emptied of collectivity or the common. In contrast, Edwards considers three important, but little discussed photographic works that engage with the anti-capitalist protests of recent years. These projects are revealed to contain another paradigm for imagining the social. These photo-works are: Allan Sekula’s Waiting for Tear Gas (White Globe to Black) (1999); Joel Sternfeld’s ‘Treading on Kings: Protesting the G8’ (2002); and Chris Marker’s Staring Back (2007).

The essay provides detailed accounts of these three works of photography within the context of recent debates in art, aesthetics and globalisation. ‘Commons and crowds’ considers how the language employed to demonise the crowd as unruly mob has played a significant role in shaping views of photography. Against this view from above, it employs Linebaugh and Rediker’s idea of ‘universalisation from below’ (The Many-Headed Hydra, 2000) as a contribution to rethinking photographic history and theory in an age of globalisation. A critical study that draws on wide-ranging research on contemporary photography as well as an understanding of theory and history, this article was one of the first to connect these important debates and suggest it was necessary to revise the predominant view of the medium. Preliminary work for this essay was presented at a number of British universities and as keynote lectures at conferences in Dublin, Durham and Bergen, Norway.