Bokus
John Peffer - Private Subjects, Häftad

Häftad, Engelska, 2026

Private Subjects

Family Photography in South Africa and the Right to Opacity

Av John Peffer

Del i serien Visual Arts of Africa and Its Diasporas

352 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar. Fri frakt över 249 kr.

Beskrivning
In Private Subjects, John Peffer presents perspectives about everyday uses of photography in predominantly Black South African communities during apartheid to give insight into how these images are seen through the eyes of those who own them today. In South Africa, portrait photography was used to create positive self-images during times of hardship and subjection. Peffer shows how owners limited the distribution of their photographs to close networks of family and friends as a means of establishing control over their own image. He develops an intersubjective method for writing about vernacular photographic experience that keeps the people that appear in those photographs at the center of the story, creating a space to converse about race and history in their own ways rather than be explained from outside the frame. He then considers cultural and legal histories of the ownership of the self-image, theorizes an ethics for looking at others’ private family photographs, and argues for a model of writing and scholarship that protects people’s desires for opacity.
Produktinformation
Utforska kategorier
Mer om författaren

John Peffer is Professor of Art History at Ramapo College of New Jersey and author of Art and the End of Apartheid.

Recensioner i media

“Private Subjects is a remarkably warm, human account of family photography made and kept by Black South Africans during apartheid. John Peffer’s own method of engagement becomes central to the ethics of the project, drawing on Black Studies’ scholarship on opacity and consent. The result is a compelling framework for writing about photographs that places the agency of photographic subjects before the claims of archives, institutions, or the art market.”—Delinda Collier, author of Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa “Private Subjects is a groundbreaking rethinking of photography, memory, and history that places Black South African family archives at the center of the story. Through intimate conversations and extraordinary personal photographs, John Peffer reveals how everyday images became acts of dignity, self-definition, and survival under apartheid, while offering a powerful new vision of photography grounded in agency, privacy, and the enduring right to self-representation.”—Felwine Sarr, author of La fabrique du présent: Pour des utopies en actes

Betyg & recensioner

0 recensioner

Inga recensioner tillgängliga.

Mer från samma serie