"Surviving Images and Images of Survival: On Activestills' photographs of Protest"

Activestills’ work points to a major change in the political and critical viability of photography within global visual culture. In the current moment, it is no longer in its status as a “document” or irrefutable indexical form of evidence and testimony that photography acquires its prominent role, but in its capacity to fosterbeliefin specific framings of the real, what Judith Butler calls “frames of war and violence.”¹ That is, in its ability to relay political and ethical affects that are inseparably sensorial, perceptual, and material. This change led scholars such as Margaret Olin, Ariella Azoulay, and Thomas Keenan..