PHOTOGRAPHY AND ONTOLOGY: UNSETTLING IMAGES AWARDED BEST ANTHOLOGY

Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images was awarded Best Anthology in the Association of Australia and NZ AWAPA Awards in December 2020. Congratulations to the editors and contributors.

As judges Dr Sheridan Palmer and A/Prof Anthony White announced, “This fascinating and deeply researched anthology contains significant and original critiques concerning the photographic and filmic medium as evidence of social, cultural, and political states of being. Including essays by an international group of researchers, it brilliantly contributes to knowledge and debates associated with the photographic archive. The basic premise underpinning all the essays is that the meaning and definition of photography is inherently unsettled. Among the many stimulating arguments found in the book are that the medium’s epistemology of ownership – “the photograph is always tethered to a witness” (Katherine Biber) — challenges photography’s relation to the arrested historical moment. Each essay rigorously tests its argument about photography’s inherent value and brings in a range of complex issues such as displacement, democracy, truth, reality, and the imaginary. Its theoretical, philosophical, aesthetic, and ontological premises are riveting. The images reproduced in the book are targeted to each contributor’s ideas in a meaningful rather than spectacular way, and the design quality of the publication is in keeping with Routledge’s scholarly, understated style. The editors Donna West Brett and Natalya Lusty have produced an extremely important book which will have profound repercussions in debates about photography for years to come.”

http://aaanz.info/prizes/2020-prizes-2020-awapas-research-in-focus-research-grants/