Essays
A collection of essays will provide critical analyses on the past, present and future of lens-based media. Contributions from scholars will offer research-based perspectives on the field, its relation to sociopolitical movements and the evolution of lens-based media.
Kim Beil
ITALIC ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR & LECTURER, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
What AI Can Teach Us about Interpreting Photos
How do I know what I think until I see what I say? – E.M. Forster The newspapers were full of pictures. Well, not exactly pictures. Descriptions of pictures. Here’s a famous one: a picture of a wide Parisian boulevard, empty except for a man having his boots blacked. You know this picture. After seeing […]
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Lucy R. Lippard
WRITER, ACTIVIST, & CURATOR
Imaging as Activism
CONTENT WARNING: VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED – “In an era where the lens is mightier than the sword, activist photography emerges as a profound means of inciting societal transformation… In this light, activist photographers are akin to modern-day revolutionaries, wielding their cameras as instruments of social awakening.” 1 All the world’s an image, especially ever since […]
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HOLLY STUART HUGHES
INDEPENDENT EDITOR, WRITER & GRANT CONSULTANT
The Persistent Demand for Misinformation and Fake Images
CONTENT WARNING: VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED – “For propaganda to succeed, it must correspond to a need for propaganda on the individual’s part…. There is not just a wicked propagandist at work who sets up means to ensnare the innocent citizen. Rather, there is a citizen who craves propaganda from the bottom of his being and […]
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Kymberly Pinder, Ph.D.
Scholar, Curator & Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale School of Art, Yale University
What Can’t be Unseen: Photography and Activism
CONTENT WARNING: VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED – “What is the frequency of images? Some photos are not quiet at all.”– Tina M. Campt, 2017 (Listening to Images, Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, 116) Today we are surrounded by a cacophony of images. Anyone can view the recording of an array of documented injustices, from police shootings […]
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Laura Wexler, PhD
PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN STUDIES, & WOMEN'S, GENDER, & SEXUALITY STUDIES, YALE UNIVERSITY
Photographic Portraits as Social Capital and Social Theft
The following essay is adapted from Laura Wexler’s lecture Photography & Restitution: The Civil Potential of the Image, and the question-and-answer session that followed on November 20, 2022, hosted by CENTER for The Democratic Lens discussion series. If we are to comprehend how “photography has evolved to be an essential device for influencing the history, culture, […]
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