Abstract
Taking advantage of developments in digital technology and the transmission of information, citizens’ photography has become a common way that ordinary people, rather than exclusively professionals, now produce knowledge. It also represents the promise of a democratisation of information-making and distribution. After defining citizens’ photography, this article offers a comparative analysis of its performance in the spheres of media/journalism, the social sciences, and human rights organisations, and shows its role in each field and its intricate relationship with experts in those fields. The analysis in these fields is concerned with the historical formation of such photography, the source of citizens’ photography’s strength or fragility, and its conditions. While most scholars have considered this practice in a single, isolated field of knowledge, this article seeks to understand its centrality to a civil politics of visual participation via a comparative approach. The article concludes with a detailed description of one of the first citizens’ photography projects in Palestine: ‘Palestinian Diaries’ (1990), which is unknown to local residents because it was broadcast only in Europe.
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