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This chapter looks at the work of the documentary protagonist as the raw material of images taken and owned by others. It develops thought by Marx and post-Marxists on the relation between the material, the worker and the capitalist in order to explore the work of the documentary protagonist. The chapter takes the stance that affective immaterial labour is also material, since it requires physical presence. The material in question is that of the documentary protagonist in the image. The work of the protagonist for the documentary image cannot be acknowledged as work since this would threaten the status of the image as documentary; so the protagonist is denied any appreciation of her contribution as either artistic knowledge work or affective labour and generally cannot claim any rights to the image of herself if it has been taken by others. The images are the property of those who took them and who, in a reading of documentary through Marx, can be regarded as capitalists appropriating the wealth that the documentary protagonist produces. The lack of rights of the documentary protagonist, in contrast to who took her image, is comparable to the lack of rights of the worker whom Marx observed in comparison to the capitalist. In order to emphasise the potential exploitation of the material, affective and creative contribution of the human and non-human protagonists to their image, those who take the product of the work of the documentary protagonists are referred to as image-takers.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137378613_9

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