On that occasion, Sara Antonelli (Universita delli Studi Roma Tre) and Jean Kempf (Université Lumière Lyon 2), both specialists in American culture, presented their research on that topic, since both of them have been working on the issue of photography related to politics and history.
Sara Antonelli’s latest publication is devoted to the work of the American photographer Gordon Parks, whose commitment to broach issues of race of classes has driven his artistic practise throughout his life. Parks was the first black American photographer whose pictures were published in the LIFE journal, like the Harlem Gang dealer collection, in 1948.
Sara Antonelli, who published in 2013 the catalogue of a retrospective exhibition dedicated to Gordon Parks, offers some historical and sociological clues to look at Parks’ pictures and to interpret them. Gordon Parks, who stated : “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera”, worked on space, frames and divisions, reflecting his observations upon the American society and its social divides. His pictures mainly focus on the condition of black Americans in the mid 20th century, at the dawn of the Civil Right movements in the United States, which challenged the traditional societal frames. Parks’ pictures of Malcom X, shot in 1963, show the photographer’s will to review the transformation of the American society and the disruption of the established social order.
Gordon Parks mainly shows us glimpses of the everyday life of ordinary people, but he also wants to direct the viewer on how to look at the pictures. His wish is not to victimise his subjects but rather to emphasise the plurality of realities related to an individual and his identity. Sara Antonelli drives us towards the notion that class and race don’t define individuals. The pictures of Ella Watson, a black cleaning lady shot by Parks in 1942, aim at both drawing the viewer’s attention towards the marginalisation of a certain class of people, as well as to encourage the identification of the audience with this woman. Parks choses to picture her reality — her family life, her hobbies, her faith — far from prejudices and the image given my the media. Parks’ work is thus a reflection upon American society and its symbols which he uses and diverts, an accusation against the American rhetoric of Freedom, along with a sharp sociological analysis of a society slowly moving towards modern life.
The photographer tends to show us the life of people who desperately try to make their way in a society where beauty is white and modernity intrinsically dependent on class standards. Antonelli’s analysis of Gordon Parks pictures thus manages to show us the success of this use of art as a weapon, in the advocation for political change
Jean Kempf was a contributor to L’Amérique des images, published in 2013, which presents a collection of images which aim at giving a portrayal of the US throughout the centuries. The book draws a parallel between the visual emergence of images coming from the US after the 1830’s and the economic and political expansion of the country in the 20th century, becoming the world’s leading country and thus spreading its culture all over the world.
Jean Kempf’s research is driven by an interest for photography, for the power of images and their role and influence on societal matters and history.
Jean Kempf’s intervention was based on an analysis of the visual treatment by the press and amateurs of the Ferguson events of 2012, as a means to analyse the evolution of the impact of images produced at that time. The main issue of this questioning was to understand what the Ferguson images tell us, and what we can conclude from them.
On August 9th, 2014, Michael Brown, a black teenager from Ferguson was shot by a police officer with no apparent reason. Thus, many people interpreted this as a racist crime. There were riots and demonstrations, and the vent took on such proportions that the events of summer 2014 ended up being compared with the civil rights movement of the 60’s. In particular, strong visual similarities between Ferguson and the civil rights movement were said to exist.
However, Jean Kempf draws our attention to the fact that, although the similarities between the two events are obvious, it is important to differentiate the treatment and the role of images and pictures deriving from it. This is mostly due to the appearance of social networks, which changed drastically the way of publishing pictures and the intention put behind them. Unlike the images that were produced during the civil right movements, amateurs played an important role in disseminating pictures after the murder of Michael Brown.
Professional pictures are often visually strong images, because they establish visual motifs and correspond to an iconological idiom. This means that professional images are built in a way that appeal to previous images, their purpose is thus to be rhetorical. This kind of pictures can be said to be stand-alone pictures, because they don’t need any contextualisation to produce meaning.
This kind of stand-alone pictures is usually published in the media. A lot of them also circulated on social networks after the events. However, through social networking, amateur pictures circulated as well, using different codes.
The narrative of those pictures is usually verbal, rather than visual, and aim at expressing an emotional reaction of the sender, and/or provoking an immediate response in the viewer. Many of them include signs, some text, or use the technique of montage. The main effect of these pictures is that they contradict the narrative built by the media, offering a much more spontaneous and instinctive vision of events. They tend to show that there is not one single truth regarding the perception of events. As what Gordon Parks sens revealed, these amateur pictures underline the conflict between conflicting realities and perceptions.
This kind of montage preceded by the hashtag #iftheygunnedmedown has been very popular on twitter after Ferguson events. Its purpose was to show the plurality of faces an individual has, inspire of the fact that the media usually prefer to show the “threatening” face of those used to be marginalised. These series of montage question the viewer: if the police gunned a young black American teenager, which picture would be used in the media to legitimise the gesture?
Amateur pictures are tools of
personal representation. They derive from a necessity of their author
to speak their own truth, refusing an official discourse that would
discredit them and not represent them well enough. They show a will to
share images with which non-professionals can identify.
Social network pictures could be understood as a modern tool feeding a culture of resistance in the face of mainstream representation, as a need for oppressed groups to be producers and not only receivers of culture. They show that there is a generation which wishes to participate actively to a reconfiguration of the codes and of the established social order.
This reconstruction of culture, however, may go hand in hand with a low level of political commitment. The question that remains could then be: can social networking constitute a proper mean of political action or does it remain a mere technological illusion?