Smith talks on photographic dynamics

By Ellise Brooks     2/24/11 6:00pm

On Tuesday, February 15, Dr. Shawn Michelle Smith, an artist and writer, gave a talk on the African American photographer Augustus Washington, who worked during the aftermath of the Civil War. Washington worked in American and Liberia, claiming himself as a free American citizen and declaring his desire for African-American Manifest Destiny through Liberia's colonization, where newly freed slaves could enjoy full citizenship.Her talk, "Augustus Washington and the Civil Contract of Photography," examined Washington's American and Liberian daguerrotypes as speculations on what it means to be a citizen. According to Smith's analysis, Washington and other leaders of Civil Rights movements define citizenship as the ability to participate in all aspects of society.

As proof, she displayed photographs taken in America and Liberia, which are now archived in the Library of Congress. The photos from both countries depict men and women, white from America and black from Liberia, standing beside symbols of their station and age. The men are featured at desks covered in books and documents, confronting the camera with stern arrogance. Young women face slightly away from the camera's gaze, dressed in the height of fashion, and older women exhibit similar poses with long and elaborate gowns appropriate to their status.

The greatest similarity between the photos is the sense of assertiveness that the subjects exude, which Smith connected to the power of the photograph. The relation between photography and citizenship endows these photographs with a "civil contract," meaning the photographs present a sense of self-possession and pride for citizens that is integrated in every aspect of society.

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Smith focused on examples from the post-Civil War and Reconstruction period of America to make her argument. However, addressing the darker side of the power dynamic presented in photographs of African Americans would have completed her argument. The book she co-authored with Dora Apel, Lynching Photographs, showcases some of the most circulated photographs of lynching and presents the issue of observing acts of violence. However, she did not discuss the power dynamics of these photographs in the same way she did with Washington's American/Liberian photos.

Smith argued that controversial photographs of violent lynching allow the subjects to "conceive the nation as a collective," and place themselves in that nation. The nation in which lynching photographs place their subject is a society of brutality. Furthermore, there is no self-possession on the part of the African Americans in these photos.

The crowds that surround the lynched bodies and stare arrogantly back into the camera control their lives and the lives of the main subjects. The dynamic in these photographs differs drastically from the photos Smith investigated, emanating a much more violent photographic energy.

The photos are statements of the power of the subject to change their situation and have the world acknowledge their assertiveness. Washington's photos are a story of coming into self-possession. Portrait forms of photography capture the self-possession of their subjects, but the same qualities are in all photographs, not just the formal ones.

Smith has authored several books including Photography on the Color Line: W.E.B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture. Though she has a flourishing writing career, she is primarily a photographer and scholar, focusing on what she said photography "obscures and reveals." She is currently an Associate Professor for Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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