Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography/
Areilla Aisha Azoulay
- UK; Verso; 2015
- 288p; 23x15cm
In Civil Imagination, Azoulay reconceptualizes photography not as a mere product (a static image) but as a practice—a relational event involving the photographer, the subject, and the spectator. She argues that photography has the potential to foster “civil knowledge,” meaning forms of address, responsibility, and shared existence that resist sovereign power. By shifting the focus from representation to civic engagement, she proposes that images can create new forms of solidarity and political imagination among people, especially across situations of exclusion or conflict.