Of collecting horror and loss and then condensing these into choice images to nudge the White national narrative in a different direction, rather than require the gaze be broken and the pencil and the camera be handed over to the subject. They staunchly defend their right to the mechanisms of recording, of telling. There is a deep unwillingness to forfeit. This book asks many questions of us and many in turn need to be leveled at it. About how the pictures extend understanding and complicity, how they challenge or illuminate present seepage of age-old prejudice and bigoted violence.
Publishing is fundamentally a business and as such hinges on profit.
And in America, the most profit seems to be made on the spectacle of others' misery. The gap between intent and function can't always be breached, and the incommensurability of such photographs seems to always exceed a statement of purpose or historical introduction or caption. One can handle imagery by leaving it behind. It is them, not us . Jacques Derrida once suggested that haunting belongs to the structure of every hegemony.