Listening to Images by Tina Campt
After reading this article, please extract one or two of her opinions and write a reflection (you do not need to summarize the content of the article, but only need to express your feelings and thoughts about her opinions).
Attached is a note of the class discussion for your reference
Listening to Images Class Notes
Key Terms
Quiet photos Black Futurity Sound, vibration
Fugitivity/Fugitive Practices Diasporic history
Archive Transfiguration Black diaspora Frequency
Governmental ity/ Institutional Spaces Seriality
Anonymity Passport photos Borders I Travel Haptic encounter
Photographic capture Bureaucratic grammar
State practices of incarcerated subjects
Key Projects Discussed
Gulu Sitters - Gallery show
City Archives in Birmingham, England
Varna Road - - mid-50s - mid-90s - Mendelsohn
"The Book of Innocence" - Breakwater Prison Photographs Freedom Rider Mugshots
Questions
How does the institution/government body use a photograph versus the individual? How does this manifest in the "volume" of the image and what is physically ?
What is a quiet photograph?
What is the grammar of black feminist futurity?
What are the different registers of photographs and how can we attune ourselves to them?
What kind of gender performances do these quiet images also capture? What does it mean to listen to a photograph? How can we listen to a photograph?
What can we garner about a photograph from its context?
Professor’s Name
Course
Date
Photograph-Visual Culture Studies Reflection
In the article, listening to Images, Tina Campt explores black feminist futurity in depth. By all standards, her definition of futurity resonates with me, and I concur. Her assertions that people’s perspective of futurity should extend beyond the notion of hope ring true. In the context of black feminist futurity, it behooves black women and their supporters to pool their efforts to actualize that which has never happened. In essence, they must devise means to liberate themselves from the stranglehold of suppression that has marked their lives since the transatlantic slave trade. According to Campt, some envision such a future in acts and actions, such as political movements and acts of resistance (Campt 17). However, she locates the hope in the least celebrated and often disposable archives of photography. Campt’s intimation that pictures c...