Since the release of the first generation iPhone in 2007, the popularity of smartphones has increased exponentially. As of 2015, two billion smartphones are in use. It is projected that in 2020 two-thirds of the world will use smartphones. One of the features which underpins the popularity of smartphones is camera which allows users to capture and share images quickly and easily. The smartphone is different from older cameras for three reasons. First, it is held continually in users’ possession. Secondly, smartphones are connected to data networks e.g. cellular and WiFi internet. Thirdly, smartphones offer users customizable camera functions; achieved through use of different software tools. As a consequence of the above, smartphone users are capable of creating and sharing photographic images whenever they wish, with global reach – and in a variety of ways. This thesis investigates the extent that smartphone hardware and software tools are transforming personal photography. To achieve this, the researcher develops a theoretical framework merging: the underpinnings of photography and personal photographic practices through literature review. Then, contemporary smartphone photographic practices are investigated through a set of 6 focus groups with 13-18, 18-25 and 25-35yr olds. Findings are interrogated through application of the framework to identify significant transformations and consistencies with precedent. In lieu of these transformations, a series of design principles are generated for personal photography. These principles characterise the current and enduring expectations users have of personal photography; as well as providing an outline for their future course. These principles offer opportunity for: application in current technologies (e.g. novel or optimized smartphone software tools); reflection upon current limitations of previous photographic technology; and development of emerging photographic technologies. This study includes two key contributions. First: a novel framework is formulated that roots personal photography’s rapidly changing social and technological circumstances in its precedent and ontology. Second: via this framework, the accelerated transformation of personal photography away from a representation act to a mechanism of social exchange (coinciding with smartphone use) is described. This offers scope for: 1) academic enquiry; by further developing the model and exploring ongoing change; and 2) industry development; by configuring new tools and collaborating with existing stakeholders to explore the many untapped opportunities in personal photography as it exists today.

The study of the cultural history of Egypt during the first half of the nineteenth century has, up to now, been hampered by a lack of a complete list of publications printed in Arabic-character. The most complete bibliography for the period covering Muhammad cAli's reign (1805-1848) lists some 304 publications. The aim of this thesis is to produce as complete a list of works printed in the first three decades of indigenous Arabic printing in Egypt (1822-1851), as is possible., in the hope that it-will serve as the basis for a definitive catalogue of Arabic-character printed works for the period. To this end 570 separate works/editions have been established and annotated with reference to the sources in which they are cited. The thesis is divided into three parts, the first offering a brief account of printing and publishing activities of the period under study, while the second part consists of the bibliography of the 570 works which are known to have appeared in this period. The third part of the thesis contains various tables of statistical information showing the general trends in publication by various criteria, laid out according to language (Arabic, Turkish or Persian), subject matter (philosophy, religion, social sciences, language, pure and applied sciences, literature, or history/geography), and the nature of the work (contemporary writing, translation or classical). Information as to the editions, contents of the works, volumes/parts, pages, price, print-runs (including copies printed and copies sold and/or distributed) are given in as complete a form as possible.

This thesis argues that photography is tainted with ingrained racist ideologies that have been present since its earliest inception in 1839. It considers the act of photographing the Other as a site of Western violence, myth, fantasy and disavowal. It examines archival images through the prism of race, representation and human rights with the aim of extracting new meanings that bring the Other into focus. This is done by reading the images both against the politics of the time in which they were made and as contemporary objects at work in the political and cultural present. The thesis makes the case that photography is burdened with ideological fault-lines concerning race and rights. The fault-lines have been forged by cultural and colonial violence resulting in Western scopic regimes that have dominated and fixed the Other within an inescapable set of Western epistemologies that have been used to serve and enhance imperial perspectives on race. I argue that these perspectives are still active within the Western mindset manifest as benign acts of photographic empathy that work to ultimately bolster Western hegemonies and economies. This thesis is based on 25 years of experience as a researcher and curator of international photography exhibitions, direct research into archives in different continental settings, the presentation of papers in a variety of national and international contexts, and interviews with photographers, curators and academics. My hypothesis is that the history of photography can only be complete if the voice of the subaltern is made critically present within it, so allowing us to engage with important political racial memory work that can help us re-read the past and reconfigure different meanings concerning history, race, rights and human recognition in the present. I argue that photography requires decolonising work to be carried out on its history. I propose that if we do not recognise the historical and political conjunctures of racial politics at work within photography and the effects on those that have been culturally erased, made invisible or less than human by such images, then we remain hemmed within established orthodoxies of colonial thought concerning the racialised body, the subaltern and the politics of human recognition.

This thesis examines how the concepts of social and aesthetic totality are addressed within contemporary photographic practice. More specifically, it uses a historical materialist methodology to consider the types of social totality and aesthetic 'totalization' which underpin four photographic projects: Zoe Leonard's Analogue, Edward Burtynsky's Container Ports, Allan Sekula's Fish Story and David Goldblatt's South African Intersections. I argue that, in different ways, each of these works critically reinvestigate certain aesthetic debates and intellectual problems which surround the (once-derided) Marxian claim that art can 'represent' or 'think' 'capitalism as a whole'. However, rather than suggesting that they revive classical Marxist tropes, measuring them against a 'model' of totalization or claiming that they adopt a Marxist 'stance', I treat them as differentially articulated contributions to the aforementioned debates; that is, as works which 'speak back' to Marxist conceptions of totality by bringing their stakes and aporias to the fore. In short, this thesis considers how Leonard, Burtynsky, Sekula and Goldblatt might help us to re-think the concepts of social and aesthetic totality in the present social, artistic and theoretical conjuncture. To this end, a dialogue is staged between the aforementioned photographic practices and three contested aspects of Marx's understanding of totality. The first chapter discusses Leonard's images of consumer goods and Burtynsky's photographs of shipping containers in relation to Marx's claim that the commodity is the economic 'cell form' of capitalist society. It considers how – through the relationship between photographer and photographed 'object' – they (indirectly) interrogate the aesthetic undercurrents of Marx's argument, its ambivalent materialism, the forms of totalizing (or de-totalizing) subjectivity which it suggests and its claim to extrapolate from the commodity to the whole. The second chapter addresses Sekula's Fish Story, a work directly informed by Marx's Capital and the Grundrisse, in relation to Marx's suggestion that the totality can be known through 'the force of abstraction'. Sekula's understanding of the relationship between photography and abstraction is addressed, as is the work's interrogation of Marx's various theories of abstraction and its account of the capital cycle. The third chapter argues that David Goldblatt's South African intersections calls Marx's topographical (or base-superstructure) understanding of totality into question. I show how – in contrast to various other forms of contemporary 'political' art, yet through a mode of political-photographic engagement – it re-thinks a concept which remained under-developed in Marx's work (yet became crucial to subsequent debates): 'political superstructure'.

Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) was a polymath figure; art dealer, collector, amateur architect and photographer. As an art dealer he dominated the scene of art collecting for fifty years, from 1875 until 1922, the date of his death. Stefano Bardini is considered as the art-dealer who reinvented the idea of mediaeval and Renaissance art in Italy. His work influenced the most important museums and private collections of his time and, in 1883 with the establishment of his showroom in his newly built Palazzo Mozzi Bardini, he created an ultra modern space that combined two important elements: the commercial and the museological. Bardini challenged his clients and their nowledge of art with his enigmatic and fascinating displays. He immortalised these displays in his photographs, using a sophisticated process that combined composition, lighting, perspective, symmetry and frames in a unique manner. This study is based on photographs from the Stefano Bardini photographic archive and is an investigation of the images and their composition as a distinctive language. The thesis will explore the visual language of the photographs as historical documents and investigate the influences of Stefano Bardini’s historical and cultural context in order to understand the creative process of his displays and illuminate how the photographic frame reveals his conscious and unconscious intentions. This study’s aim is to investigate how Bardini’s photographs reflect the original history of his time and how much he created a new historical point of view. Until now these photographs have been used to re-trace the destination of works of art sold by Bardini; this thesis has a different focus as its intention is to unfold the symbolic layers of the images and interpret their meanings with reference to the socio-cultural milieu of Bardini’s time. Letters from the Bardini archive and notebooks provide a more specific context for his innovative displays and show the personality of his clients, their art collecting interests and how photography as a relatively new medium for selling, proved to be a useful tool for the practice of art dealing.

Focusing on the objects left behind when someone dies, this project examines, through photographic practice, the history of a life as evidenced in the wounds and scars distinguishing personal possessions from commodities. Although photographic practice constitutes the critical centre of the research, this thesis goes some way to providing a context in which the work can be understood. Visual artists and literature relating to objects of the dead have not addressed the issue of materiality directly, but focused instead on the association of remembrance. I address this gap by producing a body of photographic work visually exploring the physical traces of possession. The accretions of wear and tear on material objects are an important motif that finds an analogy in the photographic process itself; the trace of touch on clothing made visible by the trace of light on film. This accompanying reflective discourse demonstrates how the iconic and indexical qualities of photographic representation make it the ideal medium for the creation of narratives that embody an emotional investment in everyday objects. The resulting photographic artefacts will add to our understanding of the ways in which a sense of touch is visually articulated; contribute to an understanding of the materiality of ordinary objects and, importantly, it will also shed light on the often-neglected power of possessions to shape a life.

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What is it ‘to move’ a photograph? Artistic tactics for destabilising and transforming images. This dissertation presents the findings of practice-led research that explores how artistic practices intervening in existing images ‘move’ images — in the sense of destabilise and transform. The notion ‘to move’ has guided this investigation and it has offered new insights on artistic tactics regarding the operations of de-contextualisation and re-contextualisation, montage, the categories of the still and the moving image and the ‘affective encounter’ that stems from touching. In parallel to exploring the artistic tactics of gleaning, working with archives, the performance-lecture, montage and the tactic I have called ‘performing documents’, this enquiry has also examined how images function, as this was crucial to conduct operations with them. Artistic practices that stemmed from existing images have been common over the last three decades. In the 1980s they operated through an understanding of the notion of ‘appropriation’ as ‘pastiche’. In contrast, this investigation, which also begins from working with existing images, explores photography through performance. These two artistic forms have often been defined in oppositional terms. This enquiry argues for a ‘performative materiality’ to renovate the discourse on images instead of the usual privileging position of the ‘textual’. This renovation deterritorialises and reterritorialises territories that are usually separated, in this case photography and performance, representation and presentation: putting these categories under pressure. As a result, this investigation re-conceptualises the notion of appropriation, through the practice of gleaning, towards an ethical and regenerative mode based on ‘invocation’, ‘restitution’ and ‘profanation’. Specifically, the work/research makes evident a form of ‘affective encountering’ of images which acknowledges their materiality, advocating that the materiality of images contributes to the functioning of images as much as the indexicality (image content). Through a focus on the materiality of images, this enquiry has provided new, nuanced insights on the issue of the agency (and resistance) of images, on the images that challenge the categories still and moving image, and a shift from photographs as containers of time to producers of time. This investigation, based on the question “What is it ‘to move’ an image?”, has generated new insights and reflections which allow us to understand images in a way that is more nuanced and dynamic, and yet grounded in their material properties. Rather than approaching these problems through prevailing methods, this enquiry has undertaken an innovative performative approach that explores the space in-between images, criss-crosses the margins and touches photographs. This performative approach—these affective encounters—have been central to challenge assumptions and offer new understandings of what images are and, more importantly, ‘how they do what they do’.

Who am I — or should I rather ask what am I? As a practising photographer with both German and Jewish origins, my artistic interest has long been in photographic representation in the aftermath of a traumatic event. Following Kracauer's definition of what may be called "photographic", namely what tends to conform to the realistic as a basic aesthetic principle, my research focuses on the role of photography in the historical recollection of a traumatic event of unimaginable dimensions such as the Holocaust. Remembrance of the Holocaust in Germany has seemed to focus on the figure of six million. By contrast, I am interested in what absence offers us in terms of future possibilities rather than a void created by the past that leads only to closure. The void comes as a historical consequence, while absence is essential to memory. With regard to the Holocaust, absence can only be found in the invisible that holds a possibility of a German-Jewish coexistence, which was interrupted by the acts committed during the Third Reich. According to Benjamin, the past that is not recognized by the present threatens to disappear irretrievably. As a consequence, photographs cannot save the moment from oblivion by pure depiction alone, but only by keeping it actual at every present moment. Instead of counting on the documentary quality of photography that speaks in the past tense of "what has been", I suggest a different approach to photography, an extension of a future subjunctive (photographic) tense speaking of "what could be, if", allowing one to think possible futures instead of harking back to the past.

This thesis explores two albums of photographs of facial plastic surgery cases from the First World War. Drawing on the assumption that a photograph’s meaning comes from its use and the context in which we view it, and emerging from the archive experience and the affect that this encounter has on me as a viewer, I examine how the photographs elicit readings, affect my historical consciousness, and shape their content for me as a viewer. The study begins with a definition of Foucault’s concept of medical discourse as a means of putting the photographs into their historical context. The use of photographs to illustrate and support surgical progress played a key part in shaping medical thinking and the dissemination of information on facial surgery. The previously separate discourses of dentistry and surgery began to integrate and ‘speak’ together; photographs facilitated exchanges between dentists and surgeons and functioned as conduits through which these professions could bridge their knowledge and skills. Reading the photographs through medical discourse only takes us so far in understanding what they mean today. During the course of this research I encountered a multiplicity of reinterpretations, including uses of these photographs as part of a re-evaluation of First World War history and some instances of being integrated into family history. These photographs raise difficult questions about their function within, and potentially, across historical discourses. These surgical images problematise Foucault’s claims to using coded ways of seeing to access the photograph’s past. The surgical photographs emerged from and in turn decisively shaped one specific medical discourse. The surgical images are historical photographs, meaningful within the kinds of discursive frameworks Foucault proposed. And yet these surgical photographs in particular can affect me —and not only me — in a way that seems to cut across time and cultural convention, that generates a spark of recognition, a connection—however brief — that cannot be discursively contained. I suggest that this kind of connection lies outside what Foucault calls history. The surgical photographs complicate, or even undermine, my own understanding of history. From one point of view they are important historical documents, but from another they function in a completely different way.