Capitalism and the Limits of Photography

Abstract
In this special issue, we seek to identify some of the relations between capitalism and photography. Capitalism is an economic system, a form of life, a generator of its own conditions of possibility. Photography is a mechanical means of fixing images, a space of fantasy and self-making, a medium for denouncing wrongs, a driver of desire in societies of mass consumption, and a conjurer of collectives. The contributors to this issue attempt to come to grips with how even the most mundane choices are permeated by violent expropriations that are out of view by design, with the ways that capitalism deforms thought and feeling, commodifying art, culture, and our most cherished values. We focus on two poles: photography as an infrastructure of capitalist accumulation and as a medium for negotiating collective memory in the wake of various practices of extraction.