Seeing through race
Subtitle: a reinterpretation of civil rights photography
By: Martin A. Berger ; foreword by David J. Garrow
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 243
ISBN-13: 9780520268630; 9780520268647
Description: "Seeing through Race" is a boldly original reinterpretation of the iconic photographs of the black civil rights struggle. Martin A. Berger's provocative and groundbreaking study shows how the very pictures credited with arousing white sympathy, and thereby paving the way for civil rights legislation, actually limited the scope of racial reform in the 1960s. Berger analyzes many of these famous images - dogs and fire hoses turned against peaceful black marchers in Birmingham, tear gas and clubs wielded against voting-rights marchers in Selma - and argues that because white sympathy was dependent on photographs of powerless blacks, these unforgettable pictures undermined efforts to enact - or even imagine - reforms that threatened to upend the racial balance of power.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : the iconic photographs of civil rights; title: The formulas of documentary photography; title: White shame, white empathy; title: Perfect victims and imperfect tactics; title: The lost images of civil rights.