Introduction: Changing the Paradigm of Photographic Creation and Circulation

Collaboration is increasingly recognized as one of the main drivers in contemporary photographic practice, and many of today’s practitioners demonstrate an attention to the dynamics and politics of collaborative work. The rise and ubiquitous development of digital photography has certainly allowed photographers to conceive of new ways to engage with the medium, to create and to share with others. At the same time, funding streams now require projects to develop outreach and think in terms of participation with and from the public. Thus, it might seem that photography, as an art practice, is taking more collaborative directions, with projects involving participants, from the creation of images to the presentation of works. Therefore, there are signs that photography, like other contemporary art forms, has taken a “social turn” (Bishop 2006). Yet it is the purpose of this book to question the assumption of a recent transformation of photography. By drawing on the notion that photography is not only a visual art but also a social practice, the authors of this book collectively debunk the standard story of photography as the work of a single operator, author or hero. Not only do they reveal the potential of photography as a collective practice by examining contemporary projects based on collaboration, but they also demonstrate that collaboration in photography has historical depth and can be construed as both an intrinsic quality and an ethical imperative for the medium. It is the central argument of this volume that beyond registering what could be understood as a recent trend in contemporary photography, a new paradigm may be defined, one in which photographic practices, both past and present, are construed as fundamentally collaborative.