Ariella Azoulay

Ariella Azoulay teaches visual culture and contemporary philosophy at the Program for Culture and Interpretation, Bar Ilan University. She is the author of Act of State (2008, in Hebrew - Etgar publisher, Atto di Stato in Italian Bruno Mondadori), The Civil Contract of Photography (2008, Zone Books, 2007 Resling), Once Upon A Time: Photography following Walter Benjamin (Bar Ilan University Press, 2006, in Hebrew), Death's Showcase (MIT Press, 2001 - Winner of The Affinity Award, ICP) and TRAining for ART (Hakibutz Hameuchad and The Porter Institut Publishers, 2000, in Hebrew). She is co-author with Adi Ophir of This Regime Which Is Not One: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and The River - (1967 - ), 2008, Resling (in hebrew); Bad Days, 2002, Resling (in Hebrew).

Curator of Act of State: 1967-2007 (Minshar Gallery, 2007), Everything Could Be Seen (Um Al Fahem Gallery, 2004), The Angel of History (Hertzela Museum of Art, Mishkan Le-Omanut, Ein Harod, 2001). Director of documentary films, At Nightfall (2005), I Also Dwell Among Your Own People: Conversations with Azmi Bishara (2004), The Chain Food (2004), The Angel of History (2000) and A Sign from Heaven (1999).

Abstract

The Civil Contract of Photography

In my Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2009) I developed a concept of citizenship through the study of photographic practices and proposed to study photography within the framework of citizenship as a status, an institution, and a set of practices. In my lecture I will present 3 curatorial projects on which I was working during the last few years ("Act of state - 1967-2007", "Architecture of Destruction" and "Constituting Violence 1947-1950"). These three projects were informed by my theoretical analysis of the relations between photography and citizenship and have contributed to it in their turn. Among the questions to be discussed will be to whom does a photograph belong, how to narrate the history of political conflicts from visual sources, what is the political space within which the users of photography - photographed persons, photographers and spectators - are participating?