Photographic Returns: Racial Justice and the Time of Photography

Shawn Michelle Smith

Published by Duke University Press 2020

Photographic Returns

Racial Justice and the Time of Photography

Shawn Michelle Smith

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478005537

Overview
Contents

About this book

Engaging contemporary photography by Sally Mann, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and others, Shawn Michelle Smith traces how historical moments come to be known photographically and the ways in which the past continues to inhabit, punctuate, and transform the present through the photographic medium.

Author / Editor information

Shawn Michelle Smith is Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; author of At the Edge of Sight: Photography and the Unseen and Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture; and coeditor of Photography and the Optical Unconscious and Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity; all also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

“Offering a major contribution to how we think about the relationship between time and photography, Shawn Michelle Smith stuns the reader into seeing familiar texts in new ways. Her scholarship is a model of careful thinking, close reading, clear writing, and historical sensibility. I learned so much from reading this book! It is a spectacular accomplishment.”

-- Elspeth H. Brown, author of Work! A Queer History of Modeling

“Photographic Returns is nothing less than a revelation. Shawn Michelle Smith takes us on a deep dive into the telescoping temporality of photography and, in doing so, fundamentally shifts our understanding of how photographic images register backward and forward in time. The hinge point of her study is its sumptuous reading of contemporary artists' use of photography as a critical apparatus that bends time in ways that connect us to the deeper affects of history. Her haunting, subtle, and truly sensuous analysis of the aftereffects of historical photography fundamentally re-visions our conception of the relationship between photography, history, memory, and temporality.”

-- Tina M. Campt, author of Listening to Images

"The charm in Smith’s writing lies in its ability to pair images (archival, vintage, popular) with reinterpretations by contemporary artists. These visitations—or, as she calls them, returns—magnify the persistent terror of white supremacy in the United States. Her chapters all bring readers to see the obvious and forgotten aspects of antiblack racism. The book positions these photographs as reminders that justice in the United States has not yet arrived."

-- Yasmine Espert Public Books

"Seen through their photographic eyes, racial historical events resurface to inspire, challenge, provoke, and provide metaphoric opportunities that reveal and expand conversations in an attempt to energize the social justice movement in the US. A much-needed addition to the literature on the pressing subject of race, representation, and photography, the book includes extensive and informative notes for each chapter and a 16-page insert of color plates."

-- J. Natal Choice

“Smith’s lucid prose and her focus on contemporary artists’ engagements with pressing social issues will make Photographic Returns appealing to advanced undergraduate students. Her implicit and explicit engagements with key concerns in the history of photography, visual culture studies, American studies, and African American studies will be of interest to graduate students and specialists in these fields.”

-- Darius Bost American Literary History

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
INTRODUCTION: Photographic Returns Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER 1. Looking Forward and Looking Back Sally Mann at Antietam Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
CHAPTER 2. Photographic Remains Sally Mann at Antietam Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
CHAPTER 3. The Scene of the Crime Deborah Luster Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
CHAPTER 4. Photographic Referrals Lorna Simpson’s 9 Props Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
CHAPTER 5. Afterimages Jason Lazarus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	112
CHAPTER 6. Photographic Reenactments Carrie Mae Weems’s Constructing History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
CHAPTER 7. False Returns Taryn Simon’s The Innocents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
CODA A. Glimpse Forward Dawoud Bey’s The Birmingham Project Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Plates Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 248
Illustrations
- Other: 75 illustrations, incl. 19 in color

eBook

Published: January 3, 2020
ISBN: 9781478005537