A new philosophy of photography that goes beyond humanist concepts to consider imaging
practices from which the human is absent as both subject and agent. Today in the age of CCTV
drones medical body scans and satellite images photography is increasingly decoupled from
human agency and human vision. In Nonhuman Photography Joanna Zylinska offers a new philosophy
of photography going beyond the human-centric view to consider imaging practices from which
the human is absent. Zylinska argues further that even those images produced by humans whether
artists or amateurs entail a nonhuman mechanical element—that is they involve the execution
of technical and cultural algorithms that shape our image-making devices as well as our viewing
practices. At the same time she notes photography is increasingly mobilized to document the
precariousness of the human habitat and tasked with helping us imagine a better tomorrow. With
its conjoined human-nonhuman agency and vision Zylinska claims photography functions as both
a form of control and a life-shaping force. Zylinska explores the potential of photography for
developing new modes of seeing and imagining and presents images from her own photographic
project Active Perceptual Systems. She also examines the challenges posed by digitization to
established notions of art culture and the media. In connecting biological extinction and
technical obsolescence and discussing the parallels between photography and fossilization she
proposes to understand photography as a light-induced process of fossilization across media and
across time scales.
