Minor photography

The first book to apply the concept of the 'minor' to the theory of photography

The notion of the minor, developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Kafka, Towards a minor literature (1975), is introduced and connected applied here for the very first time to the field of photography theory. Deleuze and Guattari defined minor literature in terms of deterritorialization, politicization and collectivization. By transferring 'the minor' to the medium of photography, this book enlarges the idea of 'the minor' and opens it up to all kinds of mutations in the process. The essays gathered in this book discuss the ways in which photography can make the dominant codes of representation stammer and how it can produce new effects and address people yet to come.

The authors consider 'the minor' as a valuable tool to help photography research move beyond, or in between, binary and hierarchized ways of thinking (of high and low art, for example, or centre and periphery). As such, it aims to contribute to a rethinking of photography as multiplicity and variation. Consequently, the term is connected with both marginal and canonical photographic practices, covering photographers as different as Miroslav Tichy, Paul McCarthy, Tacita Dean, Dan Graham, and Paul Nougé. After developing a theory of the minor, this book explores how the operations of the minor can be found in major art practices. It closes by tackling the question of photography as variation in case studies of belated forms of surrealist photography.