Please join us in the Bookshop and meet the curator and cultural historian Mark Sealy who is presenting his new book Decolonising the Camera, published by Lawrence & Wishart.
Decolonising the Camera examines how Western photographic practice has been used as a tool for creating Eurocentric and violent visual regimes, and demands that we recognise and disrupt the ingrained racist ideologies that have tainted photography since its inception in 1839.
It examines the racial politics at work within photography, in the context of heated discussions around race and representation, the legacies of colonialism, and the
importance of decolonising the university. Sealy analyses a series of images within and against the violent political reality of Western imperialism, and aims to extract new meanings and develop new ways of seeing that bring the Other into focus.
The book demonstrates that if we do not recognise the historical and political conjunctures of racial politics at work within photography, and their effects on those that have been culturally erased, made invisible or less than human by such images, then we remain hemmed within established orthodoxies of colonial thought concerning the racialised body, the subaltern and the politics of human recognition.
With detailed analyses of photographs – included in an insert – by Alice Seeley Harris, Joy Gregory, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and others, and spanning more than 100 years of photographic history, Decolonising the Camera contains vital visual and written material for readers interested in photography, race, human rights and the effects of colonial violence.
Mark Sealy is director of Autograph ABP, an independent photography organisation which champions work investigating issues around cultural identity, race, representation and human rights.
Decolonisng the Camera is produced in partnership with Autograph ABP.
Thursday 18 July, 18.00 - 20.00, Bookshop.
Free event, no Booking.
"The type of housing for half of the city's black children". Wayne Miller, 1946
Father and son at Lake MIchigan. Wayne Miller, 1937
Joy Gregory: Autoportraits: 1989-1990