Surplus-Value: Surplus Image
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_D0043
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.16995/olh.244
- Title of journal
- Open Library of Humanities
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 34
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2056-6700
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
-
https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.244/
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The surplus of images in the twenty-first century reflects a crisis of critical new ideas, and a shift away from confronting economic, environmental and political consequences. In an age of Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, exchange is the formal determinant of reproduction, and photography is both abstract labour and enjoyment. While photographs are usually considered equivalents of things—people, places, events—this illusion fails under scrutiny. But if photography has the capacity to be more than just a representation, this would provide a radical re-reading of photography and a means to reimagine the structures of capital.
This research engages with Marx’s theory of surplus-value in order to articulate new questions relating to the proliferation of twenty-first century images. Marx’s theory is usually employed to understand capital, but is rarely used in relation to photography and its abundance in contemporary culture. The work opens new discussions regarding the current condition of photography and uses surplus-value theory to understand the current proliferation of photographs. It suggests the mediation of experience has become incrementally excessive and now frames new means for a different mode of production.
This article contributes to photographic theory, and also adds to an understanding of Marx’s theory through commentary on contemporary creative practice. It offers an enhancement to thinking and understanding photography as a cultural object, and as such it helps shifts ideas away from discussions around representation toward an understanding of photography as a mode of production and dissemination. Published as part of a special edition focused on the ‘economic turn’ in contemporary thought and the critical resurgence of Marx, the article presents photography as a model for thinking through philosophical and economic ideas, and which allows a rephrasing of the discourses of production and exchange.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -