Oikography: homemaking through photography

Abstract

"Whether one is in front of the camera or behind it, inside their home or outside their house, photographs have proven indispensable in probing into the idea of home. In a time when displacement, migration, and homelessness have become commonplace due to geopolitical conflicts and oppressive ideologies, the role of photography in exploring the process of homemaking has become an irrefutable fact of sociopolitical debates. With that in mind, how can a representational medium deal with home as something that is not necessarily limited to the photographic frame? In other words, can photography embody the emotional and interpersonal aspects of home as well as participate in the social, political, and cultural debates on homemaking? Echoing the word photography, which is a compound of phōtós (light) and graphé (writing/drawing), this book defines "oikography" (oikos + graphé) as "homemaking through photography". Following the same logic, it considers "oikographs" as photographs whose principal function is twofold: reflecting on the idea of home and dwelling on the process of homemaking. With the concept of home at its methodological and theoretical core, Oikography aims to show how photography envisages, embodies and apperceives home as a spatial idea, regardless of whether that space is idealized or ideologized, ontologized or theorized, materialized or dematerialized, territorialized or deterritorialized, or internalized within us or externalized around us. To this end, Oikography asks: How can photography represent the lived, perceived, and conceived experiences of homemaking? "

Contents

Table of Contents. Introduction / Ali Shobeiri -- Part I: Domiciliation and Inhabitation. Chapter 1. Domestic Divas: Tunten at Home / Cole Collins -- Chapter 2. Inhabiting Memories: Photography and Domestic Interiors in 'Take Me to Live with You' / Flavia Matitti -- Chapter 3. Uncanny Homes: Early Computer Cultures in West-German Home Decor Magazine and Catalogue Photography / Monique Miggelbrink -- Chapter 4. The Home and the Image: Locating Passport Photos / Anuja Mukherjee -- Chapter 5. Bars and Bodies: Queer Kinship in Latinx Portraiture / Katherine Mato -- Part II: Displacement and Dislocation. Chapter 6. On Homelessness, Homemaking through Objects, and Photographic Frames / Helen Westgeest -- Chapter 7. Migrant Photography: Reimagining Belonging, Memory, and Home through Photograph / Aline Frey -- Chapter 8. Daily Lives of the Displaced: New Understanding of Home in Ukraine / Kateryna Filyuk -- Chapter 9. Palestinian Oikography: A Case Study of Destroyed Palestinian Houses and Social/Relational Consequences / Aleena Karim -- Part III: Home Dreams and Ghosted Homes. Chapter 10. Dream Estate: Imagining Ownership in Real Estate Photography / Stanka Radovic -- Chapter 11. Photography contra Real-Estate Imaginary: Global City Phantasms in India's National Capital Region / Santasil Mallik -- Chapter 12. Housing Images: Books, Objects and Museums in the Home/Archive / Suryanandini Narain -- Biographies