Still and moving images are crucial factors in contemporary political conflicts. They not only have representational, expressive or illustrative functions, but also augment and create significant events. Beyond altering states of mind, they affect bodies and often life or death is at stake. Various forms of image operations are currently performed in the contexts of war, insurgency and activism. Photographs, videos, interactive simulations and other kinds of images steer drones to their targets, train soldiers, terrorise the public, celebrate protest icons, uncover injustices, or call for help. They are often parts of complex agential networks and move across different media and cultural environments. This book is a pioneering interdisciplinary study of the role and function of images in political life. Balancing theoretical reflections with in-depth case studies, it brings together renowned scholars and activists from different fields to offer a multifaceted critical perspective on a crucial aspect of contemporary visual culture.

Jens Eder is Professor in Media and Communication Studies at the University of MannheimCharlotte Klonk is Professor in Art History and New Media at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Introduction - Jens Eder and Charlotte KlonkPart I: Using images: metaphors, processes, affects1 Images of the world, images of conflict - Ben O'Loughlin2 Worldmaking frame by frame - Zeynep Devrim Gürsel3 Working images: Harun Farocki and the operational image - Volker Pantenburg4 Affective image operations - Jens Eder5 Method, madness, and montage: assemblages of images and the production of knowledge - W.J.T. MitchellPart II: Images in warfare, insurgency and counterinsurgency6 Image operations: refracting control from virtual reality to the digital battlefield - Timothy Lenoir and Luke Caldwell7 Sensorship: the seen unseen of drone warfare - Tom Holert8 Images that last? Iraq videos from YouTube to WikiLeaks - Christian Christensen9 Images of terror - Charlotte Klonk10 The making and gendering of a martyr: images of female suicide bombers in the Middle East - Verena Straub11 Photographic archives and archival entities - Ariella AzoulayPart III: Image activism and political movements12 Exposing the invisible: visual investigation and conflict - Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski13 Human rights in an age of distant witnesses: remixed lives, reincarnated images and live-streamed co-presence - Sam Gregory14 The hunger striker: a case for embodied visuality - Bishnupriya Ghosh15 The visual commons: counter-power in photography from slavery to Occupy Wall Street - Nicholas MirzoeffAfterword - James ElkinsIndex