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    'Why have the dead come back? The instance of photography

    Luckhurst, Roger (2016) 'Why have the dead come back? The instance of photography. New Formations (89/90), pp. 101-115. ISSN 0950-2378.

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    Abstract

    This essay examines how the critical theory of photography has, at least since Barthes and Sontag, developed a default position that is routinely suspicious of the political and aesthetic value of images of the dead, even as the archive of images of the dead continues to accumulate and to shock. Photographic theory seems to share the post-war assumptions that death has been eclipsed by modernity, sequestered away and rendered taboo. The project here is to give a sense of the array of photographic practice that exists in stark opposition to these assumptions, and indeed in the contemporary moment seems actively to stage an argument with the thesis of the 'eclipse of death'. It considers work ranging from Sally Mann and Luc Delahaye to the recent projects of Edgar Martins.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): BARTHES, CRITICAL THEORY, DEATH, PHOTOGRAPHY, SONTAG
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 01 Feb 2017 16:36
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:41
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/17990

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