Diffracted Photography: A Luminous Entanglement

Abstract

Anchored on Karen Barad’s diffraction concept, this experiment puts philosophical concept to work in the practice of photography to produce knowledge differently. This photographic essay accounts for the materialities in photography, the photographer-researcher’s entanglement with the ecology while navigating Cambodia’s Angkor temples. The experiment departs from the conventional ways of photography as representations of reality instead, looks at photography as a relational assemblage, a diffractive intra-action between humans and non-humans, always reconfigured in its infinite becomings. To surface how photographs are actualized entails being entangled in the mesh: the triggers, movements, and sensation, creating diffractive patterns. Weaving the footages while photographing the site produces luminous layers of visuals, a sheer reminder that photographers and its apparatuses are entangled with other than humans and calls for response-able actions in acknowledging the constitutive materialities of the ecology which we are only part of.