Week 2:

A Practice of Refusal: Black Portraiture in Britain and Beyond 

In a research text written to accompany Uncommon Observations: The Ground that Moves Us (2022), Rhea Storr describes this multi-sited artwork as “a series of counter-surveillance photographs” and a means through which a Black subject can ‘resist a gaze which seeks to hold us, to capture. This week we will examine the social and political significance of Black portraiture as a practice of refusal, that is, resisting the gaze by controlling how one is captured. We will focus primarily on Black diasporas in Britain, from the studio portraits of post-war African Caribbean migrants to the work of contemporary Black photographers who often use self-portraiture. The role of studio photography in Black American and African contexts will also inform our investigation.

Learning Methods 

Read: *‘The Lyric of the Archive’ in Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and African Diasporas in Europe by Tina Campt. 

* This chapter is quite long, so if you’re unable to finish it all, please try to focus on pages 129-156, then look at the images on the subsequent pages. 

Look:  Race, Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Self: The Photography of Rotimi Fani-Kayode  

Look: Pleasure as Activism: Ajamu X’s Photography 

Look: Maud Sulter, Zabat (1989)