On Point of View: Writing photography, violence and the self

In this talk, I discuss the process of writing my current book-in-progress, a work of experimental non-fiction about photography, violence and love. As an academic, I am tasked with understanding photography’s history, but my own experience of violence has shaken my trust in my eyes, even as I carry the authority of someone who ‘sees’ for a living. Writing involves occupying a point of view, taking a position, orientating myself in relation to the issues at hand. By extension, it means questioning knowledge itself: what it is to write ‘I see’ as another way of claiming that ‘I know’. For the past fifteen years, my research has been concerned with photography of conflict, violence, terror, trauma and loss. Behind this book is a recognition that the true connecting thread that has held that work together – the motivation underneath it all – has been their opposites: desire, vulnerability, and love. These are the reasons why photography plays such a critical role in times of crisis and despair. It is also why photographic archives are sites of such contention. I will draw examples from the chapters of my current work that are focussed on conflict and war, to pose a challenge to those writing about violence and seeing: to centre their bodies and their selves, while in turn creating space for the uncertainty of their own vision as a radical political stance.