Key Theories Preface: From Seeing to Action—A Map and Toolkit of Theory
We urgently need a language not just for “feeling,” but for “seeing clearly” and “speaking back.”
We live in an age thoroughly saturated by images. From the endlessly refreshing social feed and the ubiquitous surveillant gaze to the visual spectacles generated by algorithms, the speed, production, and political force of images are reshaping our perception, memory, and public life in unprecedented ways.
Yet, in the face of this deluge, we often feel powerless. We are stunned by spectacle, numbed by atrocity, or lost in a sea of information. We urgently need a language—not just for “feeling,” but for “seeing clearly” and “speaking back.” We need an operational toolkit to dismantle how images work and to consider our ethical position within that operation.
This anthology is such a response. It is not a shrine of theory to be worshipped, but a “theoretical topographical map” that practitioners (be they creators, curators, researchers, or citizens) can use to navigate. We have gathered these 22 key texts to collectively answer three interconnected questions: How do we see? How do images work? And how do images intervene in the world?
Our journey begins with the fundamental conditions of spectatorship: we explore how images trigger our experience, time, and affect (Sontag, Barthes); how our bodies and perceptions are trained by optical apparatuses and social discipline (Crary, Benjamin); and whether the essence of photography is “trace” or “resonance” (Krauss, Silverman).
Next, we learn the concrete methods of reading. We grasp the basic formal grammar (Szarkowski), identify the power and the gaze hidden in ways of seeing (Berger), and analyze how images and texts ally or contend with each other (W. J. T. Mitchell).
However, images are never isolated. We must go behind the scenes to investigate the institutional, archival, and display logic that produces and authorizes them. We will see how “evidence” is manufactured by the procedures of policing and governance (Tagg); how “documentary” becomes a critical archival politics that reveals the tracks of labor and globalization (Sekula, Rosler); how the museum’s “white cube” functions as a machine for producing history (Crimp); and how even the inscriptions and damages on a photograph’s back carry a material life story (Edwards & Hart).
Finally, this map leads us to the technical-political core of our present. We will examine how images are pre-determined by the “apparatus” (Flusser), orchestrated by the logic of “software” and “database” (Manovich), and how, on contemporary platforms, they execute new forms of circulation and governance through “low resolution” and “vertical perspectives” (Steyerl).
This map is full of dynamic tensions. We will witness the ontological debate between the “index” (Krauss) and the “analogy” (Silverman). We will also trace the critical turn in ethics—from Sontag’s warning of “ethical numbness,” to Linfield’s call to “learn to see,” and finally to Azoulay’s “civil contract,” which demands we answer the summons of others.
These 22 texts constitute, rather than a summation of theory, a “working language” that can be put to use. It allows us to take a single photograph and trace it from individual feeling and formal structure, through its institutional procedures and technical rules, and ultimately, to land it in our public responsibility.
In the contemporary flood of images, this toolkit invites us to: See clearly, articulate, and act responsibly.
The Map of the Collection: Six Theoretical Plates
1. Foundations / Spectator & Ontology
- Susan Sontag, On Photography
- Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
- Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
- Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer
- Kaja Silverman, The Miracle of Analogy
2. Formal Language / Ways of Reading
- John Szarkowski, The Photographer’s Eye
- John Berger, Ways of Seeing
- Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths
- W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory
3. Institution / Archive / Display (incl. Critique & Materiality)
- Douglas Crimp, On the Museum’s Ruins
- John Tagg, The Burden of Representation
- Allan Sekula, Photography Against the Grain
- Elizabeth Edwards & Janice Hart (eds.), Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images
- Martha Rosler, Decoys and Disruptions
4. Sociology & Everyday Practice
- Pierre Bourdieu, Photography: A Middle-brow Art
- Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire
5. Ethics / Civics / Violent Images
- Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography
- Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance
6. Apparatus—Software—Platform
- Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography
- Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media
- W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?
- Hito Steyerl, The Wretched of the Screen