Week 1:
Picturing Blackness: Colonial Documentation and the White Gaze
In her Art on the Underground commission, Rhea Storr presents a history of surveillance intertwined with the history of the Black diasporic experience.
This week, we will examine the use of photography as a technology of power, control, and subjugation. We will consider how colonial documentation of the Black experience in Africa and the diaspora was framed through a white gaze, informed by white supremacy, anti-blackness, and structural racism.
Learning Materials:
Read: ‘Violence of the Image’ from Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time by Mark Sealy
Look: Africa Through a Lens