Mapping Meaning, the Journal (Issue No. 1)

The Breath Camera:
a prototype for
anticapitalist photography
Trudi Lynn Smith
Left | Figure 1
2016 Burned Landscape,
Oregon Desert Trail BLM
Lands, USA (with Krista
Caballero). Photographic
documentation.
I am an artist and anthropologist with an
interdisciplinary PhD from University of
Victoria, Canada. Over the past 15 years I have
explored relationships between photography as
object, image and event, through installation,
performance, and in academic research and
writing. My artistic and academic practices
are platforms to address the significance
of photography by breaking it down to its
fundamental properties in order to propose new
forms of collectivity. My work considers the way
that places like National Parks are maintained
through photography; the relationships between
archives and photography; and the structure
of artworlds as a complex of people, funding,
studios and materials. My writing and photoessay
work has been published in journals such
as Cultural Anthropology, Visual Anthropology
and Imaginations Journal. My artworks have
been installed in place-specific locations across
North America and in venues such as Open Space
Gallery, The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, and
Arts Incubator. I am currently artist-in-residence
in the Making Culture Lab at SFU investigating the
role of the anarchival materiality within archives.
trudilynnsmith.com
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