Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image

Abstract

This review considers the impact and efficacy of material thinking in anthropological studies of photographs and photographic practices. Such analytical strategies have moved the analysis of photographs beyond that of the visual alone and illuminated the cultural work required of photographs. After reviewing key analytical positions of social biography, visual economy, and photography complex, I explore the material work of photographs through two registers: the idea of “placing”, in which photographs become active in assemblages of objects, and the processes of material repurposing and remediation of the humble ID photography. These strands are drawn together in the idea of a sensory photograph, entangled with orality, tactility, and haptic engagement. The article argues that photographs cannot be understood through visual content alone but through an embodied engagement with an affective object world, which is both constitutive of and constituted through social relations.