When I has my likeness took: Black Subjects and the Modernization of Photography

Time: Jan. 30, 2020, 5 p.m. - 6 p.m.

Location: Slocum Auditorium

Joan Bryant (African American Studies)

What did it mean to be a modern black photographic subject in images produced by white photographers?

Bryant's talk explores issues in the SUArt exhibition, Black Subjects in Modern Media Photography: Photographs from the George R. Rinhart Collection. It analyzes how white photographers presented people and practices as black subjects while the medium was becoming increasingly modern in the first half of the twentieth century.  It reflects on the silences regarding black people’s efforts to assert identities through mechanisms they did not control. Finally, it maps how photographers, their subjects, and viewers negotiated and contested diverse meanings of blackness. 

A reception follows the talk.

Additional supporters:

• SUART Galleries
• African American Studies Department 
• Newhouse  
• Community Folk Art Center (CFAC)

Joan Bryant, African American Studies