#19 Image Flow

In March 2022, Phillip Roberts was appointed first ever curator of photographs at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries. One of his tasks is establishing how many images the libraries hold because, he cheerfully admits, nobody knows. There are prints held in the archives it has obtained, but there are also images in its books and magazines, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. These reproductions have previously flown under the radar, but looking at them and thinking about their distribution unlocks new ways of thinking about photography – not least its role in colonialism.

At the other end of the scale, digital imaging and the internet have encouraged an explosion of online sharing – so much so that Andrew Dewdney, co-director of the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University, argues we should forget photography and consider these entities as something new. These twin movements, encompassing contemporary imaging and the oldest photographs, have encouraged Photography+ to consider image flow, the ways in which photographs can be distributed, and how that distribution is controlled.

We feature Hoda Afshar’s images of protesting Iranian women, found online despite efforts to suppress them, and Krerkburin Kerngburi’s images of Thai TV. We speak with three institutions about their online initiatives, explore saman archive’s work with photographs and more in Ghana, and get NYC collector David Solo’s take on photobooks. Our Community Submission by Polish photographer Jakub Pasierkiewicz, considers images displayed in public, and how they degrade over time.

Diane Smyth
Editor