Joanna Zylinska • THE FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Nonhuman Vision
What is the future of photography - and the future of humans as its producers and subjects? In today’s network of seeing machines, which includes CCTV cameras, drone media and satellite imaging devices, photography is increasingly decoupled from human agency and vision. Yet from its very beginning, the photographic medium has relied on the execution of a nonhuman, mechanical element. In her video essay originally commissioned for the SITUATIONS/Posthuman series at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Joanna Zylinska explores the eponymous concept from her monograph, Nonhuman Photography (MIT Press, 2017). Her essayistic montage combines video footage shot with her Samsung Galaxy phone camera worn on her neck in densely-populated urban locations with the stills taken with an Autographer, an automated ‘intelligent’ wearable camera. Experimenting with immersive forms of image capture and embodied perception, Zylinska’s concept of nonhuman vision provides an alternative vantage point, allowing us to unsee ourselves from our species-based parochialism.
Joanna Zylinska is Professor of Media Philosophy and Critical Digital Practice at King’s College London, a writer, artist and curator. Prior to joining King’s, she spent 17 years at Goldsmiths, working across digital theory and practice.