‘Photography’s Neoliberal Realism is an indispensable contribution to photography theory at a time when digitalisation continues to have a significant effect on the status of photography as a ‘discrete medium’, demanding ever higher levels of visual literacy.‘ Burlington Contemporary
Confronting the work of widely celebrated photographers Annie Leibovitz, Gregory Crewdson and Andreas Gursky, Photography’s Neoliberal Realism examines how these artists produce capitalism’s equivalent of the Soviet Union’s socialist realism by giving photographic form to widely held and rarely questioned beliefs and ideas. The ideological framework that Colberg terms ‘neoliberal realism’ serves to cement an economic system whose many fault lines are becoming increasingly clear, such as staggering inequality and racial disparities. This extended essay provides an alternative reading of photographic works laden with artifice, and argues how focusing on this artifice misses the more far-reaching ways such images operate in our visual economy.
DISCOURSE is a series of small books in which a theorist, artist, or writer engages in a dialogue with a theme, an artwork, an idea, or another individual across an extended text. Explore the full series here.
Silkscreen paperback with flaps
12.5 x 19.5cm, 40 pages
ISBN 978-1-913620-16-5
November 2020
