The Unintended

Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism

Monica Huerta

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English

New York University Press
06 June 2023

The Arts: General & Reference; History of Art & Design Styles; Photography & photographs; Property law

Series: America and the Long 19th Century

Reimagines photography through the long history of ideas of expression

The end of the nineteenth century saw massive developments and innovations in photography at a time when the forces of Western modernity—industrialization, racialization, and capitalism—were quickly reshaping the world. The Unintended slows down the moment in which the technology of photography seemed to speed itself—and so the history of racial capitalism—up. It follows the substantial shifts in the markets, mediums, and forms of photography during a legally murky period at the end of the nineteenth century. Monica Huerta traces the subtle and paradoxical ways legal thinking through photographic lenses reinscribed a particular aesthetics of whiteness in the very conceptions of property ownership.

The book pulls together an archive that encompasses the histories of performance and portraiture alongside the legal, pursuing the logics by which property rights involving photographs are affirmed (or denied) in precedent-setting court cases and legal texts. Emphasizing the making of “expression” into property to focus our attention on the failures of control that cameras do not invent, but rather put new emphasis on, this book argues that designations of control’s absence are central to the practice and idea of property-making.

The Unintended proposes that tracking and analyzing the sensed horizons of intention, control, autonomy, will, and volition offers another way into understanding how white supremacy functions. Ultimately, its unique historical reading practice offers a historically-specific vantage on the everyday workings of racial capitalism and the inheritances of white supremacy that structure so much of our lives.

By: Monica Huerta
Imprint: New York University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Volume: 26
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781479812400
ISBN 10: 1479812404
Series: America and the Long 19th Century
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 06 June 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Monica Huerta is Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at Princeton University and author of Magical Habits.

Reviews for The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism

"""When you look at a photograph, whose expression do you see? This is a question of perception, but it is also a question of property rights. The Unintended considers ‘stories about photography’s history as property’ and shows how much is at stake when someone claims to own an image. Expression gives way to possession, and matters of law, credit, identity, and aesthetics all hang in the balance. Monica Huerta seems to deliver a surprising analytic turn on every page. This book made my head spin."" -- Caleb Smith, author of Thoreau’s Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture ""Wholly original and exciting. Tracking photography’s intersection with property law in the late nineteenth century U.S., The Unintended evolves genuinely new possibilities for thinking about the medium’s role in the construction of race. Monica Huerta addresses the workings of capital in relation to the medium—not only photography’s status as a commercial practice, but also how it took up and redefined the ways bodies could be regarded as property. Closely historicized yet wide-ranging in its implications, Huerta’s book models a profoundly ethical attention to what the photographic archive can reveal."" -- Dana Luciano, Rutgers University"