Synopses & Reviews
Image Brokers is an in-depth ethnography of the labor and infrastructure behind news images and how they are circulated. Zeynep Gand#252;rsel presents an intimate look at the ways image brokersand#151;the people who manage the distribution or restriction of imagesand#151;construct and culturally mediate the images they circulate. Through this framework, news images become visual commodities that impact how politics and culture are visualized in the world.
Set against the backdrop of the War on Terror and the industry-wide transition from analog to digital technologies, Image Brokers is a multi-sited ethnography based on fieldwork conducted at the industryand#8217;s centers of power in New York and Paris. It also explores how new digital and social media platforms continue to change photojournalism and create ever-widening distribution networks. The book is a powerful investigation of the processes of decision making amid the changing infrastructures of representation.
Synopsis
How does a photograph become a news image? An ethnography of the labor behind international news images,
Image Brokers ruptures the self-evidence of the journalistic photograph by revealing the many factors determining how news audiences are shown people, events, and the world. News images, Zeynep Gursel argues, function as formative fictions - fictional insofar as these images are constructed and culturally mediated, and formative because their public presence and circulation have real consequences in the world.
Set against the backdrop of the War on Terror and based on fieldwork conducted at photojournalism's centers of power, Image Brokers offers an intimate look at an industry in crisis. At the turn of the 21st century, image brokers--the people who manage the distribution and restriction of news images--found the core technologies of their craft, the status of images, and their own professional standing all changing rapidly with the digitalization of the infrastructures of representation. From corporate sales meetings to wire service desks, newsrooms to photography workshops and festivals, Image Brokers investigates how news images are produced and how worldviews are reproduced in the process.
About the Author
Zeynep Devrim Gand#252;rsel is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Macalester College.