Seminar:

Catalog description

This course will consider how vernacular photography offers insight into the possibilities and limitations of the medium’s central relationship to black subjectivity. While the history of photography most often begins with a named photographer, considerations of vernacular photographs often start with the unknown or quotidian subject depicted. In the case of vernacular photography of the African Diaspora, interpretations depend heavily on discourses of race as they intersect with the images’ historically specific social uses and viewing conventions, their physical and tactile nature, and diverse networks of circulation. This course addresses a range of visual material including daguerreotypes, commercial studio portraits, family albums, identity photographs and lynching postcards. It will turn to a roster of innovative thinkers to remap the very ways photography and Black life are discussed. Readings by scholars including Tina Campt, Shawn Michelle Smith, Leigh Raiford, Christina Sharpe, Kevin Quashie, Tanya Sheehan, and Saidiya Hartman inform moments of close looking and reflection.