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With the evolution of the political regimes, the image of a successful leader has shifted from an image of majesty to one of dignity, and later on to one of closeness and simplicity.

When one visits the rooms dedicated to Velásquez in the Museum of Prado, it is extraordinary how portraits of kings and those of jesters and peasants are laid side-by-side. The nobility and dignity given to the lower members of the court exemplifies an early example of a revolution in the politics of representation. In the antipodes of this example, we analyse how the campaign of the millionaire Michael Bloomberg to be the Democratic Candidate for the 2020 elections hired companies to produce nonsense memes and digital propaganda. Our hypothesis is that on the center of its strategy the goal was to create an image of Bloomberg that besides viral would be relatable and humorous. The article overviews the evolution of the portrait as an element of political of representation and reflects on how the development of modern and contemporary art transformed the art of political portraiture. Furthermore it deliberates on the two-way appropriation of representation techniques between art movements and political movements.

The visuality of the master is not motivated merely by the desire to stand out from the audience, but in a self-contradictory manner, it is premised on the audience acknowledging and providing photographic space to him.

India’s Independence from the colonial rule saw the nation’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru emerge as a powerful visual presence. At the peak of his popularity, in June 1955, he made a highly publicised 16-day visit to the USSR. This visit, made in the backdrop of the Cold War and the impending Big Four Conference, was covered in detail by the Indian and foreign press, as well as both government’s official photographers and camerapersons. Paper addresses an official album made after this iconic visit to investigate the role of photography within India-Soviet diplomatic networks. Casting Nehru as the Master persona, it delves into the function of photography in recasting his image as an international traveller, a crusader for peace, a negotiator, and a friend of the Soviet. Considering India’s and Soviet’s differing political stance and international position in that period, the article questions what does the presence of these official photographs reveal about emerging trans-national networks and if there were there any deviations in this careful reconstruction of the Master and his ally.

The power struggle that findom photography presents is actually just a hook, and the images do exactly what they set out to do. The free critic, by critiquing masculinity’s repetition and contrivance, is recruited into the performative duty of sustaining the eroto-economy.

Financial domination (findom) is a fetish practice in which a submissive derives erotic pleasure from sending money to a dominant or a cashmaster. Cashmasters produce photographs meant to elicit this desire in cashslaves, essentially arousing the desire to send money. This essay approaches this emergent genre of seemingly self-promotional photography as a genre of photographic performativity (Levin 2009). Rather than the desire to capture or represent (Batchen 1999), these images evidence a choreography of photographic performativity including both masters (as makers) and slaves (as viewers). Though the compliance with form and economic practice tempts the interpretation that masters are now slaves, this essay suggests that these images invite performances of domination, submission, and critique into wider performatives of arousal and elicitation. What critics and social analysts perceive as power (economic, erotic, or otherwise) are, in fact, desire at its seams, in the process of active and cooperative composition.

The deadline for contribution proposals (150-word abstracts and/or visuals) is April 28, 2022. The deadline for the finished contributions from accepted proposals is July 4, 2022. Please send proposals via the online form or contact us directly at editors(at)membrana.org.

The deadline for contribution proposals (150-word abstracts and/or visuals) is April 28, 2022. The deadline for the finished contributions from accepted proposals is July 4, 2022. Please send proposals via the online form or contact us directly at editors(at)membrana.org.

The figures are essentially ambiguous, at the crossroads of nature and culture.
What makes photographs so complex is how they render visible that which should not be possible to see. Therefore, in some way, all photographs teach us how to see and set out the co-ordinates for our visual understanding.

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By blurring her visual identity in a public virtual space, which is almost subversive in the period of generalised extrovertedness and narcissism, Berk turns to the postulates of the dominant culture. Nevertheless, it is with this steady state of absence, during expected authenticity, that she receives a new and different type of attention from the users of social media networks.
By blurring her visual identity in a public virtual space, which is almost subversive in the period of generalised extrovertedness and narcissism, Berk turns to the postulates of the dominant culture. Nevertheless, it is with this steady state of absence, during expected authenticity, that she receives a new and different type of attention from the users of social media networks.
Contemporary consumerist culture reacts very positively to visual manifestations of wealth, popularity and enviable lifestyles, something which Instagram enables and promotes.
Contemporary consumerist culture reacts very positively to visual manifestations of wealth, popularity and enviable lifestyles, something which Instagram enables and promotes.
She chose to be possessed and then dispossessed by the seven spirits associated with the planets of classical antiquity.
In this project, BIND collaborates with photo.circle to explore the relationship between memories of the locals and the city of Kathmandu.
The primary expressive media of New York based artist Chamblis Giobbi are sculpture and photographic collages. He is a self-taught artist with a long history of creating collages and who had chosen the path of visual arts after a fifteen-year career as a composer of Late-Romantic classical music. His adoption of the concept of (passing of) time and simultaneity in the development of musical ideas was to become an integral part of his artistic endeavours.
The primary expressive media of New York based artist Chamblis Giobbi are sculpture and photographic collages. He is a self-taught artist with a long history of creating collages and who had chosen the path of visual arts after a fifteen-year career as a composer of Late-Romantic classical music. His adoption of the concept of (passing of) time and simultaneity in the development of musical ideas was to become an integral part of his artistic endeavours.
Salaj is one of those photographers who are characterized by deep reflection of the meaning and perception of image from different, mainly philosophical viewpoints, while at the same time following the objectivistic principles of photography.

The article that aims to analyse the artistic production of photographer Bojan Salaj is based on conversations and reviews of his archive. Among Slovenian photographers, Salaj is the one who has been seen as an embodiment of the decisive shift in perception of the photographic medium that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He has never worked as documentary photographer or photojournalist; his authorial practice has always been primarily focused on the context of exhibition and against unconventional solutions. Salaj is one of those photographers who are characterized by the deep reflection of the meaning and perception of image from different, mainly philosophical, viewpoints, while at the same time following the objectivistic principles of photography. At a glance, his practice is extremely eclectic and post-modern, which is due to the fact that he is not looking to find an individual and recognizable artistic voice; he dedicates his focus to individual projects, bringing into his work various different references and themes. Nevertheless, a central motive can still be perceived throughout his output. In the past 25 years, Salaj has mostly been attracted to the here and now; this includes the fundamental problems of representation of photography in mass media, iconography of power structures, models of construction of history, and ways of establishing national and cultural identities.

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