Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses: ideas and quotes from Henri Lefebvre’s, The Production of Space; and three recent images taken by myself that activate the text and vice versa. The image spaces that accompany this paper are concerned with the production of consumers in retail and leisure spaces.

Paper long abstract:

My concern with The Production of Space hovers primarily with the chapter The Plan of Present Work. The quotes used from here illuminate ideas of spatial politics and the human subject as part of production. I will argue the consequences of Lefebvre's philosophy apply to photography practice, often gravitating with critique on the capitalist mode of production. Lefebvre exists to as the spatial context to ideas of ideology in/and the image. The paper questions the notion Space through Production in image research. Key to discussion is representations of space that is material constructs like retail façade. And representational spaces, that is 'concern' for image production and production in the image. Representational spaces realise themselves as representations in the image. For example architecture is a representation of space, but as subject to image production it is also a representation in image space. The hanging of the image in gallery space constitutes a representation of space in a space of representations.

Marx is often associated with political economy. Marx is central to this paper, but in discussion of production and the spaces outlined. Creativity for Marx is that condition denied or limited by the practice of capitalism. Analysis of anthropology starts with ideas on Marx's human nature. I will tacitly set out the grounds that production, in and outside of the image, is best when freed from the constraints of capital. That man labours is science, but the commoditisation of labour is ideology. Capital, created and retained, is an ideology.