Photographic Returns

Shawn Michelle Smith is Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; author of At the Edge of Sight: Photography and the Unseen and Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture; and coeditor of Photography and the Optical Unconscious and Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity; all also published by Duke University Press.

“Offering a major contribution to how we think about the relationship between time and photography, Shawn Michelle Smith stuns the reader into seeing familiar texts in new ways. Her scholarship is a model of careful thinking, close reading, clear writing, and historical sensibility. I learned so much from reading this book! It is a spectacular accomplishment.” - Elspeth H. Brown, author of (Work! A Queer History of Modeling) “Photographic Returns is nothing less than a revelation. Shawn Michelle Smith takes us on a deep dive into the telescoping temporality of photography and, in doing so, fundamentally shifts our understanding of how photographic images register backward and forward in time. The hinge point of her study is its sumptuous reading of contemporary artists' use of photography as a critical apparatus that bends time in ways that connect us to the deeper affects of history. Her haunting, subtle, and truly sensuous analysis of the aftereffects of historical photography fundamentally re-visions our conception of the relationship between photography, history, memory, and temporality.” - Tina M. Campt, author of (Listening to Images) "The charm in Smith’s writing lies in its ability to pair images (archival, vintage, popular) with reinterpretations by contemporary artists. These visitations-or, as she calls them, returns-magnify the persistent terror of white supremacy in the United States. Her chapters all bring readers to see the obvious and forgotten aspects of antiblack racism. The book positions these photographs as reminders that justice in the United States has not yet arrived." - Yasmine Espert (Public Books) "Seen through their photographic eyes, racial historical events resurface to inspire, challenge, provoke, and provide metaphoric opportunities that reveal and expand conversations in an attempt to energize the social justice movement in the US. A much-needed addition to the literature on the pressing subject of race, representation, and photography, the book includes extensive and informative notes for each chapter and a 16-page insert of color plates." - J. Natal (Choice) “Smith’s lucid prose and her focus on contemporary artists’ engagements with pressing social issues will make Photographic Returns appealing to advanced undergraduate students. Her implicit and explicit engagements with key concerns in the history of photography, visual culture studies, American studies, and African American studies will be of interest to graduate students and specialists in these fields.” - Darius Bost (American Literary History)

• Acknowledgments  viiIntroduction: Photographic Returns  11. Looking Forward and Looking Back: Rashid Johnson and Frederick Douglass on Photography  162. Photographic Remains: Sally Mann at Antietam  343. The Scene of the Crime: Deborah Luster  614. Photographic Referrals: Lorna Simpson's 9 Props  935. Afterimages: Jason Lazarus  1126. Photographic Reenactments: Carrie Mae Weems's Constructing History  1337. False Returns: Taryn Simon's The Innocents  152Coda. A Glimpse Forward: Dawoud Bey's The Birmingham Project  170Notes  175Bibliography  213Index  229