The Future of Photography and Collaboration in Education: Co-creating with Civil Intent

In this chapter we argue that a photography education that seeks to provide critical perspectives on the ethics and politics of collaboration and engage students in co-created processes of critically reflective action needs to move beyond historical models of photography education that place the auteur at the centre of photographic production. In line with political theorist Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (2008, 2015) and art historian Daniel Palmer’s (2017) reframing of photography as a series of relational, political, and collaborative events, we argue that the future of education in photography and collaboration is dependent upon photography educators orienting themselves and their students towards pedagogies that actively address the ontological and ethical complexities of collaboration. We address this through the case study of The Photo Lab—a situated education project run by RMIT University on the unceded lands of the Eastern Kulin Nations in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, where undergraduate photography students co-create projects with community partners.