Touching Gestures: An Affective Reading of a Photograph of Asylum Seekers

The chapter examines the photography art in terms of its affective, sensuous, and material dimensions. The examination is situated in part among the theorizing on the affects, the experiential, and the sensuous that emerged in the social sciences and humanities in the 1990s. The chapter presents, first, sensuous, material, and affective art as a place where it is possible to reshape both the content and working methods used in contemporary photography art. Secondly, it seeks to show the arts-policy potential of the artwork and proposes a methodological tool to explore and create photography art in the context of affects and representations and different material and spatial conditions. Thirdly, the chapter proposes that the affective-sensuous method may further one’s apprehension of the hidden or unrecognized material-discursive spaces related to producing the photography art, and streaming qualities of space, body, and gender. In the heart of the chapter is the artist Laura Böök’s work. For over two years, photographer Laura Böök followed the life of Congolese families and asylum seekers who moved to Pudasjärvi, a small town in northern Finland.