Abstracted Bodies:
Violence, Photography, and its Modern uses in Drone Warfare.
5.5x8.5". 38 Pages. 2026.
Published by Dada Issues Collective Press.
Through a historical and theoretical analysis of photography, Abstracted Bodies: Violence, Photography, and its Modern uses in Drone Warfare investigates the intersections of photography and the modern optical systems of war. The paper investigates seminal texts on photography as well as historical photographic processes, re-interpreting them through the guise of modern war and investigating the violent relationship between the gazer and the gazed. The power of seeing, violent acts of light, and the history of photography and weapons manufacturing are all investigated. The text then flips these ideas, analysing ways in which these military technologies abstract the body and dehumanize killing by abstracting acts of violence. The military technologies investigated purposefully disrupt the violent gaze of photography, de-burdening the moral responsibility of the gazer, leading to an increase of violent civilian deaths in real conflicts around the world.
Through a historical and theoretical analysis of photography, Abstracted Bodies: Violence, Photography, and its Modern uses in Drone Warfare investigates the intersections of photography and the modern optical systems of war. The paper investigates seminal texts on photography as well as historical photographic processes, re-interpreting them through the guise of modern war and investigating the violent relationship between the gazer and the gazed. The power of seeing, violent acts of light, and the history of photography and weapons manufacturing are all investigated. The text then flips these ideas, analysing ways in which these military technologies abstract the body and dehumanize killing by abstracting acts of violence. The military technologies investigated purposefully disrupt the violent gaze of photography, de-burdening the moral responsibility of the gazer, leading to an increase of violent civilian deaths in real conflicts around the world.