Exploring radically new possibilities for contemporary photography by an internationally leading theorist.

This book is the product of a unique collaboration between Israeli artist and philosopher Aïm Deüelle Lüski and visual culture theorist Ariella Azoulay. In their longstanding working relationship, they research how to theorize the structure of the contemporary scopic regime and open a space for its civil transformation. On this occasion, Azoulay interprets a particular series of cameras built by Deüelle Lüski, along with photographs taken by these cameras. Unlike conventional cameras and their vertical photography, Deüelle Lüski's cameras seek to generate new sets of relations between the camera and the world. Azoulay's text unfolds four different ‘short histories' of problems in photography, each of which deconstructs what otherwise might appear as a coherent photographic regime, yet which is shown to be based solely on principles of sovereignty and possession. Through and with Deüelle Lüski's project Azoulay seeks to ‘potentialize' the history of photography, that is, to recover long forgotten, un-materialized possibilities. The book contains 100 images and a conversation between the author and the artist.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Deüelle Lüski's camera project is instructive in its non-technological determinism: it exemplifies the fact that technologies are not teleological, but are malleable. In the case of photography, through its flexibility, it can disrupt attempts -; no matter how forceful -; to fix their ontology, their products and the messages they produce. Subversive projects such as Deüelle Lüski's may be increasing through community connections made easier with new media technologies; we will have to see where the threshold era that Azoulay and Deüelle Lüski claim we are in will take us in terms of civil engagement. Nonetheless, to see the threshold as a horizon instead of an obstructive, vertical plane is already a positive step.
Sonya de Laat, Western University, Visual Studies 2015 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2015.1020084

Visant à repenser la photographie à neuf, le travail conjoint d'Ariella Azoulay et Aïm Deuelle Lüski amène a reconsidérer l'histoire de la photographie ainsi que ce par quoi on la définit. Il s'agit là d'une expérience déconcertante, mais cette réflexion apparaît nécessaire pour se dégager des conceptions qui entravent un rapport citoyen à la photographie.
Erika Wicky, Ciel Variable n° 98, 2014

Ariella Azoulay is a theorist of photography, curator and documentary filmmaker. She teaches in the departments of Modern Culture and Media (MCM) and Comparative Literature at Brown University.