Living in a time when the production, distribution, and consumption of images happens at an extremely fast and constant rate, reflecting upon the ontological nature of an image, and the contemporary ways images can and should be used for political change is of utter importance. A crucial point that the authors of this week’s readings touch upon is the responsibility we have as spectators of an image. This very Brechtian calling, invites us to understand that the translation of the image from it’s two-dimensional realm unto the realm of knowledge depends upon what Rancère understands as a Dispositif of visibility–the understanding an image as an element within a network of conceptions of realities, perceptions, symbols, meanings, and other data: “An image never stands alone. It belongs to a system of visibility that governs the status of the bodies represented and the kind of attention they merit. The issue is knowing the kind of attention prompted by some particular system (Rancière, 93).” Reading Azoulay alongside Rancière, the reader, and also the spectator of photography, is prompted to re-think of their own role in the creation of meaning and knowledge by understanding this role within a body-politic. Thus, the spectator is positioned as a citizen, a political subject that must act and think responsibly. Personally, this understanding of political responsibility via our relationship to an image is perhaps the most urgent subject touched upon the authors. Particularly as we live in a time when our connection and understanding of the world is mediated by images. Thinking not only of revolutions, and reconstructed monuments (Protests in Chile, the defaced Ángel de la Independencia in Mexico City), but also of how contemporary atrocities and violent social injustice such as police brutality against black citizens gets recorded, and shared with such ease that one must always question our role as mediators, as spectators, as consumers, and distributors of such images. “Becoming a citizen means replacing these impartial positions with a position that is partial to the civil contract of photography, a contract without which modern citizenship is invalid, insofar as it is the contract that made the conquest of the world as picture possible (Azoulay, 157).”
Last but not least, Beltrán touches upon a very specific example of how citizenship and political belonging is reconfigured not only via images, but via the platforms that today are responsible for holding and sharing various forms of media. Via social media interactions and cyber-testimonios DREAMers have re-arranged and “queered” immigration politics by claiming their right to visibility. Refusing secrecy, and challenging surveillance, DREAMErs are organizing, questioning, and archiving their existence in a way that for me, is the perfect embodiment of Azoulay’s citizen of photography: “The act of prolonged observation by the observer as spectator has the power to turn a still photograph into a theater stage upon which what has been frozen in the photograph comes to life.”