Photography seems like a simple act but it camouflages complex cultural dynamics involving vantage, assumed ideals, and ideological affiliations. Images are the yardsticks we measure ourselves against to construct our social identities, and those of others. Images of people valorise or pathologise, they idealise, they condemn—they reveal, conceal, dismantle and construct. This process is further complicated in our times when most of what we know about the world/reality comes from media, not from our senses or experience.
The Performed Image: Photography and Identity