Photography as Activism: Images for Social Change

This fully revised and updated second edition of Photography as Activism is both a study of activist photography, and a call to action. It offers students and documentary photographers insights into the theory, history, philosophy, and practice of photography as activism.

The book is lavishly illustrated with 85 key historical and contemporary images. Chapters have been revised to include contemporary ideas about representation, gaze, agency, and decolonizing the camera, as well as an expanded history that includes work from the global South and the civil rights movements in the US. A new fourth chapter focuses on activist practices that go beyond traditional reportage. It features 19 new interviews and updates on the original interviews. Photographers talk about their practices, the challenges they face in the twenty-first century, advice on working with NGOs and non-profits, and how to form partnerships to expand the dissemination of their work.

Photography as Activism is an essential text for courses on documentary and photojournalism, and those that explore art as social change more broadly, but also a call to action for young photographers to pick up their cameras and advocate for change.

Michelle Bogre is Professor Emerita at Parsons School of Design and The New School, after a 25-year career that included being chair of the Photography Department at Parsons and teaching almost every type of photography class. She also is a documentary photographer, writer, and intellectual property lawyer. She co-founded the CRUX Photography Research Network (at Arts University Bournemouth), an international research network of photographic artists, researchers, educators, and theorists. She has written hundreds of articles and book chapters about photography and law, as well as three books: Photography 4.0: A Teaching Guide for the 21st Century (Routledge 2014), Documentary Photography Reconsidered (2019), and The Routledge Companion to Copyright and Creativity in the 21st Century (2021).