Photography and Resistance

"Through careful readings of the work of Indigenous American, Latinx, Latin American, and African American women photographers, Claire Raymond confronts foundational myths of Western cultural superiority in the Americas, myths that have persistently fostered forms of erasure, oppression, and violence. In a rigorously argued analysis, Raymond interprets diverse bodies of work that by subverting colonialist rhetoric enact a photography of resistance. Raymond provides a rich counter narrative to the mainstream photographic discourse, focusing on artists who act not only to critique and deconstruct, but who reimagine history and powerfully assert the realities and possibilities inherent in our contemporary moment."

 - Elizabeth Ferrer, Chief Curator, BRIC

This book argues that photography, with its inherent connection to the embodied material world and its ease of transmissibility, operates as an implicitly political medium. It makes the case that the right to see is fundamental to the right to be. Limning the paradoxical links between photography as a medium and the conditions of political, social, and epistemological disappearance, the book interprets works by African American, Indigenous American, Latinx, and Asian American photographers as acts of political activism in the contemporary idiom. Placing photographic praxis at the crux of 21st-century crises of political equity and sociality, the book uncovers the discursive visual movements through which photography enacts reappearances, bringing to visibility erased and elided histories in the Americas. Artists discussed in-depth include Shelley Niro, Carrie Mae Weems, Paula Luttringer, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Matika Wilbur, Martine Gutiérrez, Ana Mendieta, An-My Lê, and Rebecca Belmore. The book makes visible the American land as a site of contestation, an as-yet not fully recognized battlefield.

Claire Raymond teaches at the University of Maine (USA) and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (USA). She is the author of eight previous books of feminist scholarship, including The Photographic Uncanny: Photography, Homelessness, and Homesickness and The Selfie, Temporality, and Contemporary Photography.