Drones and streets: On the image composition of the Tahrir and Gezi occupations

Abstract

This chapter discusses the political and social composition of the 2010-2013 cycle of contention by focusing on the ways in which the crowd has been captured in iconic images of the 2011 “Tahrir moment” in Egypt and the 2013 Gezi uprising in Turkey. I compare two main points of view, namely the drone and street-level perspectives, from which the crowd has been portrayed. The drone-perspective images representing the crowd occupying the square, I argue, give us the people as a political subject, while the street perspective picturing the revolutionary everyday of the occupation constructs the crowd as a social relationship. Eventually, I argue that the relation between these two perspectives points at the tension between what has been deemed the political and the social. I suggest that it is in between these two complementary perspectives that not only the visual language, but also the socio-political composition of the uprisings can be understood. © 2021 Taylor & Francis.