Before & after: the architecture of disaster

Abstract

"Catastrophes, bombed-out cities, large-scale political transformations: "Image complexes" of humanitarian and ecological upheaval document the world as a sequence of catastrophes. But who decides how events are presented, determines the resolution of our visual worlds, and controls the circulation or censorship of images? Eyal and Ines Weizman trace the history of the before-and-after image from nineteenth-century photography to contemporary satellite images and discover a gap that not only conceals the devastating event: it is the human subject itself that is in danger of disappearing from the images. Does humanitarian work, the documentation and reconstruction of war crimes, in which people's fates and rights should be at the center of attention, paradoxically enter a post-human phase? How can the gap between images become a site of critical counter-reading rather than a symbol of erasure?" -- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Before & after -- The history of the before-and-after image -- The vertical gaze -- Violence in the Anthropocene -- Algorithmic vision -- Ruins in reverse -- In the gap between the images: Eyal and Ines Weizman in conversation with Marie Glassl.