When revolutions are exotic. Michael Christopher Brown (Magnum Photos) and the Lybian revolution, 2011
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/Fotocinema.2018.v0i17.5112Keywords:
Photography, United States, Lybia, Arab springs, Photobooks, Autobiography, Bildungsroman.Abstract
Michael Christopher Brown is a US photographer who went to Lybia in 2011 in order to meet and document the Lybian Revolution. He published his images in a 2016 book, Lybian Sugar. In it, he tried to overcome the limitations of the traditional photo documentary —practiced in Western countries since the Spanish Civil War— by using an amateur camera —the iPhone— and an autobiographical narrative form of his experience there. I argue that the ethical position that emerges from the work remains deeply ambiguous despite the qualities of the book and the photographer’s skill. More broadly, I argue that the book is representative of a trend in contemporary Western photography which finds it difficult to go beyond a post-colonial auctorial stance, despite sincere efforts to the contrary.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Addario, L. (2016). Tel est mon métier. Paris : Fayard. (Traduction de This is What I Do.)
Azoulay, A. (2008). The Civil Contract of Photography. New York ; Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.
Barthes, R. (1957). « La grande famille des hommes » in Mythologies. Paris : Seuil.
Benjamin, W. (1996 [1931]). Petite histoire de la photographie. Études photographiques 1. http://journals.openedition.org/etudesphotographiques/99, page consultée le 19 avril 2018.
Brecht, B. (1992 [1930]). « Der Dreigroschenprozess. Ein soziologisches Experiment », Werke (éd. W. Hecht). Francfort/Main, Suhrkamp, t. XXI, p. 448-469.
Brothers, C. (1997). War and Photography: A Cultural History. London ; New York : Routledge.
Brown, M. C. (2016). Libyan Sugar. Santa Fe, NM : Twin Palms Publisher. La version feuilletable en ligne se trouve à http://michaelchristopherbrown.com/photography/book/.
Cartier-Bresson, H. (1952). Images à la sauvette. Paris : Verve.
de Baecque, A. (2011). Le cas Kapo: « De l’abjection », ou comment Jacques Rivette forge une morale de la représentation des camps de la mort. Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah, 195,(2), 211-238.
Foucault, M. (1966). Les Mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris : Gallimard.
Gidley, M. (éds.) (1992). Representing Others: White Views of Indigenous Peoples. Exeter: The University of Exeter Press.
Kerouac, J. (1960). Sur la route. Paris : Gallimard. (Traduction de On the Road.)
Kuhn, T. S. (1991). La structure des révolutions scientifiques. (L. Meyer, Trans.) (Nouv. éd. augm. et rev. par l’auteur). Paris: Flammarion.
Laugier, S. (2006). Littérature, philosophie, morale. Fabula-LhT. 1 (février 2006). http://www.fabula.org/lht/1/Laugier.html, page consultée le 19 avril 2018.
Lutz, C., & Collins, J. L. (1993). Reading National Geographic. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
Malia, M. E. (2010). Histoire des Révolutions. Paris : Seuil. (Traduction de History’s Locomotives, 2006)
Nussbaum, M. (1998). Exactly and Responsibly: A Defense of Ethical Criticism. Philosophy and Literature, (22).
Peress, G. (1984). Telex persan. Paris : Contrejour. (https://pro.magnumphotos.com/Package/2K7O3RB1IQ48)
Posner, R. (1997). Against Ethical Criticism. Philosophy and Literature, (21).
Posner, R. (1998). Against Ethical Criticism: Part Two. Philosophy and Literature, (22).
Sandeen, E. J. (1995). Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950s America. Albuquerque, NM : University of New Mexico Press.
Sontag, S. (1979). Sur la photographie. Paris : Seuil. (Traduction de On Photography.)
Sontag, S. (2003). Devant la douleur des autres. Paris : C. Bourgois. (Traduction de Facing The Pain of Others.)
Steichen, E. (1955). The Family of Man : the photographic exhibition. New York : Simon & Schuster. (Nombreuses rééditions de ce catalogue.)
Stendhal (1839). La Chartreuse de Parme, Ière partie, ch. 3.
Talon-Hugon, C. (2009). Morales de l’art. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France.
Vonnegut, K. (1969). Slaughterhouse-five; or, The Children’s Crusade, a Duty-dance with Death. New York : Delacorte Press.
Walsh, R. A. (2015). The Geopoetics of Modernism. Gainesville, FL : University Press of Florida.
Downloads
Additional Files
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
All contents published in Fotocinema Revista científica de cine y fotografía are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. All about this license is available in the following link: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0>
Users can copy, use, redistribute, share and exhibit publicly as long as:
- The original source and authorship of the material are cited (Journal, Publisher and URL of the work).
- It is not used for comercial purposes.
- The existence of the license and its especifications are mentioned.
There are two sets of authors’ rights: moral and property rights. Moral rights are perpetual prerogatives, unrenounceable, not-transferable, unalienable, imprescriptible and inembargable. According to authors’ rights legislation, Fotocinema. Revista científica de cine y fotografía recognizes and respects authors moral rights, as well as the ownership of property rights, which will be transferred to University of Malaga in open access. The property rights are referred to the benefits that are gained by the use or the dissemination of works. Fotocinema. Revista científica de cine y fotografía is published in an open access form and it is exclusively licenced by any means for doing or authorising distribution, dissemination, reproduction, , adaptation, translation or arrangement of works.
Authors are responsable for obtaining the necessary permission to use copyrighted images.
.png)
13.png)
