“Woke" cancel culture appears to have the visual art of photography in its crosshairs now, accusing it of “racism.”
Photography has been used “as a technology of power, control, and subjugation,” the first lecture of a new online course that is part of the Transport for London (TfL) art scheme is to tell its audience.
Art on the Underground is a contemporary public art programme that commissions both permanent and temporary artworks for the London Underground. Now, it is also offering a four- week lecture course in January, entitled “Uncommon Observations: Photography, Image-making, and the Black Diaspora.” It is set to probe “the relationship between photography, Blackness, and diaspora from the photograph’s invention in the 19th century to contemporary Black photography and image-making,” states the project website.
Curated by Black Blossoms School of Art & Culture, the course is to be taught by academic Nydia A. Swaby, a black feminist historian and ethnographer. The course overview says:
“Rooted in colonial notions of Blackness as otherness, photography – as a tool of surveillance and documentation – has influenced cultural meanings of Blackness, historically to the present day. In response, Black artists have used the camera to the unsettle photography’s colonial legacies and to create their own conceptions of Blackness, diasporic identity, and culture.”
Screenshot of Twitter account of the Black Blossoms School of Art & Culture.
© Photo : Twitter
Swaby 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." Another upcoming lecture will focus on the "social and political significance of Black portraiture as a practice of refusal, that is, resisting the gaze by taking control of how one is captured."
The Black Blossoms group earlier stated that it was seeking to “expand critical and diverse thought that will decolonise and disrupt euro-centric art and creative education.”
28 December 2022, 14:25 GMT
Previously, UK media reported that the much-loved novel Ivanhoe, penned by Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, had been dragged into a racism row and singled out as potentially “disturbing” by academics at the University of Warwick, in Coventry.
The historical fiction tale has now been deemed potentially “disturbing” for its "treatment of racial minorities," with a Walter Scott descendant denouncing this “cowardly” approach as catering to “political fashion”.