Commons and Crowds: Figuring Photography from Above and Below

摘要

Drawing on Marxist historiography, this essay examines the crowd as a marker for collective life in contemporary photography. In contrast to the mass media's demonisation of the 'mob' and art photography's evacuation of the crowd, it looks at three critical projects - Chris Marker's Staring Back; Allan Sekula's Waiting for Tear Gas (White Globe to Black); and Joel Sternfeld's Treading on Kings: Protesting the G8 in Genoa - that present a 'horizontal' image of the crowd from below which disfigures the view from above.