Slought is pleased to announce Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography, on display at Slought from September 6, 2018 through October 31, 2018, with an opening reception and lecture by Ariella Azoulay entitled Potential Histories of Photography on Thursday, Sept 6 from 6-8pm.

Collaboration is an ongoing research project and a pedagogical tool that explores photography through the lens of collaboration. Based on the assumption that a degree zero of collaboration is at the basis of the event of photography, the collaborative team proposes a potential history of photography, different from the dominant history of single photographers and their approach and techniques. The material, practical and political conditions of collaboration in and through photography are explored through over one hundred photography projects. Throughout, the exhibition seeks to make visible the various relationships, exchanges, and interactions between the participants in the event of photography that result in tangible traces of collaboration.

Azoulay's forthcoming book, Potential History (Verso, 2019), focuses on key political concepts-institutions: archive, sovereignty, art, and human rights. A concept and an approach that she has developed over the last decade, Potential History has far-reaching implications for the fields of political theory, archival formations, and photography studies. With photography, we can see clearly how imperial technologies operate. Photography is an event that consists of an encounter among many, despite the fact that we are always invited to learn it and account for it either as the enterprise of individual photographers or as a medium that portrays its subjects from the perspective of individuals. Azoulay will present some of the "potential histories" that she unfolded in her different archival projects.