Martha Rosler's "in, around, and afterthoughts"
 
Martha Rosler's "in, around, and afterthoughts"
 
a "seminal, brutal critique of documentary photography" (1981)
 
"Rosler's essay portrays documentary as an untenable practice: to look at and record the real world, unmediated, is to run the very high risk of victimizing a second time those already victimized by social injustice" (49)
 
Davey argues that "[m]uch of the staged, directed, and patently constructed [photographic] work of the '80s and after, whether it's of a critical nature or not, is underpinned by Rosler's critique"
> from Moyra Davey's Index Cards (2020)

> tagged with #to_read, #documentary, #photography

> created October 29, 2026 at 11:12:30 AM

> part of unfinished everything

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unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

selection, arrangement, and original text available for creative reuse under this licensing arrangement

authors' quoted words are their own.

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