Photography and Its Publics

by Melissa Miles (Editor), Edward Welch (Editor)

Photography is a ubiquitous part of the public sphere. Yet we rarely stop to think about the important role that photography plays in helping to define what and who constitute the public. Photography and Its Publics brings together leading experts and emerging thinkers to consider the special role of photography in shaping how the public is addressed, seen and represented.This book responds to a growing body of recent scholarship and flourishing interest in photography's connections to the law, society, culture, politics, social change, the media and visual ethics.Photography and Its Publics presents the public sphere as a vibrant setting where these realms are produced, contested and entwined. Public spheres involve yet exceed the limits of families, interest groups, identities and communities. They are dynamic realms of visibility, discussion, reflection and possible conflict among strangers of different race, age, gender, social and economic status. Through studies of photography in South America, North America, Europe and Australasia, the contributors consider how photography has changed the way we understand and locate the public sphere. As they address key themes including the referential and imaginative qualities of photography, the transnational circulation of photographs, online publics, social change, violence, conflict and the ethics of spectatorship, the authors provide new insight into photography's vital role in defining public life.

266 pages, Hardcover

Published January 23, 2020

About the author

Professor Melissa Miles is based in the Art History and Theory program at Monash University.

Her research explores the interdisciplinary qualities of photography and its movement across the domains of art, law, politics and history. The role of photographs in cross-cultural photographic relations is another key area of research interest. In partnership with Robin Gerster, she has completed a major study supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant on photography in the Australia-Japan relationship from the 1890s to the present. Melissa’s Future Fellowship project examined the important role of photographs in the public sphere, and their special significance in contexts of transitional justice.

Melissa’s research is published in a wide range of journals, including Journal of Visual Culture, Law Culture and the Humanities, Japanese Studies andHistory of Photography amongst many others, and she is a regular contributor to the arts press. Her books include Photography, Truth and Reconciliation (Bloomsbury), Pacific Exposures: Photography and the Australia-Japan Relationship (with Robin Gerster, ANU Press), The Language of Light and Dark: Light and Place in Australian Photography (McGill Queen’s UP and Power Publications), The Culture of Photography in Public Space (co-edited with Daniel Palmer and Anne Marsh, Intellect and the University of Chicago Press), and The Burning Mirror: Photography in an Ambivalent Light (ASP).