Photography is more accessible than ever before. Its codes are fluently read and rapidly reproduced by most people who produce and consume photographs in social media and elsewhere, as a communication strategy is essentially eloquent, poignant, complex, and charged. But the hyper-trafficking of photographs has (further) commodified them and simplified their meaning—most photographs have become memes. Photography is undoubtedly an important tool for the expansion of capitalism and its control of ideas, identities, and bodies. Is thus photography … a professional discipline, an art practice, and a subject of study in crisis? Yes. Producing a discourse that is critical of photography’s means of production and distribution is a daunting task. Photography’s potential has been kidnapped by the structures of power, turning it into a tool for oppression instead of a means of liberation. As photographers, our task is to find the necessary means to reclaim its might.
— Carlos Motta, artist
Photograph by © Cory Rice
