Wide Angles
University of Texas at Austin
Images, Race, and the Rise of a Mass Visual Culture View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christopher Lukasik
This paper discusses the role of images and race in the development of a mass US visual culture. The images and reception history of David Hunter Strother’s Virginia Illustrated provide a compelling case study through which to consider the importance of racialized viewing to the early success of Harper’s Monthly at a critical moment in media history. My study demonstrates how these images distributed racialized types for mass consumption and, more importantly, how they reproduced a racialized mode of viewing for the illustrated magazine’s multitude of readers. I close by considering the extent to which these images and their mode of racialized viewing was necessary for the illustrated magazine to coalesce what were then still largely regional markets for periodicals segmented by the gender and class of their readers
Photography in Social Scientific Research and Multimodal Scholarly Communication
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Luc Pauwels
While the gradually developing fields of ‘visual social science’ involve more than using (static) photographic image technologies, this paper provides a systematic and critical discussion of photography-based methods: ranging from analysing existing or ‘found’ visual data of a variety of sources, the production of visual materials by the researcher, to approaches that try to actively involve the field through using visual materials in interview situations, or to prompt the subjects of research to become producers of their own visual data and views, and finally to the emerging opportunities to ‘communicate’ insight in novel, more ‘expressive’ ways. Photography as a technology and a multifaceted cultural practice clearly entertains varied and very significant exchanges within the social sciences but there is still a considerable amount of unrealized potential. Technological innovations need to be interrogated in terms of their specific advantages and limitations and translated in novel methodologies to become serviceable to research. They may literally expand our field of vision but at the same time they also involve more radical redefinitions of the position of the researcher and the researched, both in literal and more metaphorical sense. Moreover, it is important to focus on the multimodal opportunities afforded by combining different expressive systems rather than trying to play out them against each other. More solid and explicit methodologies may help to rectify misconceptions around the use of visual media and entice more researchers to consider these tools as viable and complementary options for doing truly empirical social science research.
Featured Reimaging the City: Mobilizing Souvenirs for Social Activism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Emmanuel Osorno
Souvenirs are everywhere. Their ability to encapsulate the image of a city and to evoke memories of it make them desirable, treasured, and ubiquitous objects. And yet, despite their commemorative powers, souvenirs present all but an accurate depiction of a city and, as such, they contribute to a distorted, incomplete, and often problematic view of that place. After all, who gets to decide which scenes, which buildings, and whose stories are worth being represented in them? This paper argues that, given the current landscape of sociopolitical reckoning, the images and objects of souvenirs ought to be mobilized to redirect the tourist gaze towards pressing issues that affect the everyday of the city's residents. Through a series of photomontages and illustrations, this paper explores how souvenirs from New Orleans can be revisited to bring attention to, disseminate knowledge of, and generate discourse about the realities confronted every day by local residents. Ranging from infrastructural issues to race relations, the proposed images and artifacts masquerade as souvenirs to infiltrate and exploit the cycle of media consumption and production and captivate a wide-reaching audience. By operating within the realm of realism through photomontage and appropriation, these objects speculate on a new breed of activism, which reconstitutes the role of the souvenir and that of its audience, encouraging them to go from passive consumers to active agents of change.
