Camera of Possibilities: A Workbook for a Carrier Bag Theory of Photography


Co-Authors: Mira Dayal & beck haberstroh
Editor: Katie Giritlian


Camera of Possibilities: A Workbook for a Carrier Bag Theory of Photography starts with a single sheet of paper. As you navigate the text, you’ll transform this sheet into a series of “paper cameras” that explore photographs you have taken, circulated, or received. These playful activities serve as props for reflecting on photography and its legacies of capture.


 

Co-Authors
Mira Dayal is an artist, writer, and editor based in New York. Her studio work often involves laborious, critical uses of language, material, and site, and has been shown in at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, Bungalow, Stand4 Gallery, Hesse Flatow, Gymnasium, Lubov, NURTUREart, NARS Foundation, and Abrons Art Center in New York, as well as at STNDRD (Granite City, IL), OCHI (Los Angeles), Kunstverein Dresden (Germany), and other spaces. She has participated in residencies and intensives at Ox-Bow School of Art, Art in General, and A.I.R. Gallery, and has been a visiting critic at Triangle Arts Association, Pratt Institute, SmackMellon, Kunstraum, and Residency Unlimited. Her writing has been published widely in Artforum, Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail, Performa Magazine, and several exhibition catalogues. Dayal teaches in the MFA departments at Hunter College and the School of Visual Arts.

beck haberstroh is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, collaborator and facilitator based somewhere between Brooklyn, Southern California, and the cloud. Their practice uses elements of sculpture, performance and photography to counter the mass accumulation of images by governments and corporations with a more intimate index. haberstroh is a co-founder of a performance residency called rehearsal and a nomadic learning community called Millennial Focus Group. Along with their collaborator, Katie Giritlian, they will be presenting a public artwork as a part of the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture’s Park Social Initiative in 2022. They were a 2022 participant at SOMA Summer, a 2019 Media Arts Fellow at BRIC and a 2018 Cuts and Burns resident at Outpost Artist Resources. They’ve been included in group exhibitions at Small Editions, Gymnasium, the School for Poetic Computation, Babycastles, Bullet Space, Knockdown Center, Flux Factory, CSU Long Beach and the Wassaic Project, among others. haberstroh has an MFA from the University of California, San Diego.


Readers
We imagine this publication being shared by, but not limited to:
  • students in, and teachers of, introductory photography and open-level documentary courses
  • photography or lens-based practitioners and media producers—of any level—who might need some inspiration, or a new context in which to critically engage their practice
  • artists and writers interested in the camera and legacies of capture
  • storytellers and image enthusiasts
  • anyone who wants to play with, and imagine alongside, the entanglement of science fiction and photography

Reading Room
We offer a non-exhaustive room for texts, friends, and projects that have informed or expand on the exercises in this publication. Accessible here.

September 2022
Softcover, 78 pages, 8.5 x 14 inches
ISBN: 979-8-9869461-0-8
Edition of 250
Sliding Scale