The Rustling Image

The Rustling Image discusses the aesthetic, philosophical, and political resonances of low-resolution digital images in connection to the popular and wider use of mobile phone cameras through the case study of citizen journalists and political activists during the Syrian civil war.


This book describes the witnessing techniques of low-resolution mobile phone images, focusing on the way in which citizen journalists, activists, and film collectives found alternative means by which to document the Syrian civil war during a special period in media history – that of the western media being mostly unable to obtain access to Syria. Such blurry and pixilated images, which often fail to verify what they are meant to prove, are not simply the result of technological limitations. Rather, they have been embraced as an aesthetic of resistance that seeks to distinguish itself from the clearer and sharper HD and 4K sensibility that characterizes the western hegemonic media corporations’ coverage of news events. This book highlights that the role of blurry and underexposed images is to make us aware that there is a category of witnessing whose purpose is to reveal the significance of what is not visible; and to make us understand the sense of uncertainty that we feel towards our own inability to comprehend events that have been spiraling out of control in our post-truth world.