A text on authorship outside the institution.
This is a reflection on a fragile, often invisible position: the autonomous author — one who works not for recognition, but from inner necessity; not within the field, but alongside it; not as a strategy, but as a form of survival.
The text is divided into two parts:
- Analysis — an attempt to map the conditions, tensions, and structures of autonomy in contemporary artistic practice (with a focus on photography).
- Real-world examples — reading autonomy in photography: criteria and figures. Attempt at Measurement
- Autonomy is not a choice, but a consequence of structural incompatibility.
- It is not heroic, not sustainable, and not scalable — yet it persists.
- It demands engineering, discipline, and silence — not as ideals, but as conditions of possibility.
- It is political not by declaration, but by its very existence outside the logic of visibility.
- 📖 Read the full text online: English
- 📄 Download PDFs:
- English (screen)
- English (print) - forthcoming
This work is anonymous and in the public domain. It belongs to no one and to everyone.
Released under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.
To the extent possible under law, the author(s) have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. You are free to:
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This is a free work, released into the public domain. Use it as you wish.
“The autonomous author cannot be a model. He cannot be repeated. He cannot be scaled. But he can be — and that is enough.”
— Autonomous Author