Photography as clouds: Notes toward the possibility of spatial photography

Abstract

Many recent visual and technological changes in photography are related to the fact that it is increasingly connected to space through computerization and digitization. Photographs no longer appear as framed 2D images, but rather resemble a cloud whose viewing and operating mode necessarily involve navigation. My purpose in this article is to think about photography’s ontological and epistemological status through its contemporary spatial uses. Using two projects by Forensic Architecture, I examine two methodologies of spatial photography – photogrammetric point clouds and the Image-Data Complex – and claim that, whereas with the emergence of the internet, digital photography has primarily been perceived as a networked image, today we should think of it in terms of clouds. Both projects rely on a posthuman multiplication of perspectives and a vertical conceptualization of photography as navigable space. Both also represent and demonstrate the medium’s contemporary political potential for documenting, creating evidence and organizing data. Finally, both challenge traditional definitions of photography and outline new alternatives for interrogating human rights violations.