Photography is a complex language that has definitely always been a highly debated subject. As we have studied, Susan Sontag discusses concerns about the objectivity of photography. As she says, "To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting one's self into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge, and therefore like power." The angles of a picture and the elements excluded or included by the photographer reflect a particular socio-historical context. Therefore photography, as a new media, became a subjective form of representation that changed perception and the structure of society. The new visual media played an important role in the representation of lynching. In the 19th century, white supremacists used lynching photographs as a means to exercise their superiority and power. Postcards of lynched african americans were circulated throughout the US as evidence and as a way to impose the ideology that blacks were the inferior race.
In part 2 of our project, instead of focusing on the way white supremacist used lynching photographs, we decided to investigate how the african american press used visual imagery and shifted the purpose of the lynching photographs. As discussed in class and according to Carolyn Marvin, new media technologies are platforms on which old groups confront one another. The old practice of racism and white supremacy, found a new platform to present itself through the lynching photographs and the immortalization of these events. However, even though the lynching photographs served in a specific cultural context and had specific cultural effect, we are focusing on the specific way these lynching photographs served as a new and efficient platform that promoted African American equality and activism and transformed the African American community, culture and their sense of space.
Media is a powerful tool for social change. New forms of media, including photography helped African American activists spread their ideas and activism across communities. Newspapers that circulated in the 19th century used visual imagery as a means to explicitly show the lynchings and they used text along with the photographs to emphasize how they wanted the public to interpret the image: as an unacceptable behavior that should be abolished. Lynching illustrations created primarily by African American artists and editors, redefined the meaning of lynch mobs and their victims, and laid the groundwork for later forms of visual activism. The black press, used a range of visual alternatives that deployed anti-lynching illustrations to counter negative stereotypes used to justify lynching. Lynching is even compared to rape, showing how terrible it was to take one’s life in a public manner and having a crowd of spectators thrilled to see this ‘punishment’. The sources depicted in the powerpoint are illustrations from the Indianapolis Freeman and the Cleveland Gazette. In which artists used the repetition of familiar characters like presidents and Uncle Sam, along with the symbolic deployment of lynching victims themselves to foster a sense of urgency and crisis, and to hold political parties accountable.
However, in addition to these visual illustrations, the visual lynching photographs co opted by the black press ultimately played the most important role in the challenging of mainstream interpretations of lynching at the time. The lynching photographs documented atrocity, evoked emotion that fueled activism, and advocated a strong response from the federal government. In comparison to the illustrations used before the photographs, the visual images in photographs transcend temporal moment and spatial setting which allowed African Americans to incorporate and use the lynching photography as a mobilizing force with the goal of bringing about social and political change and expand their citizenship rights. The visual imagery, posters and photographs in these newspapers played a significant role in the African American community, promoting a national culture of civic engagement among readers.
Photography helped transform african american rights across the US, something completely different than the negative purpose the lynching photographs were being originally used for, which we explained thoroughly in part one of the assignment.
African american press and activists used these horrible lynching photographies to shift interpretations. The images were no longer ‘positively’ making white supremacists more powerful, but instead they were used to evoke emotion and reflection on these horrifying actions. They took a negative image and transformed its purpose to make positive imaginings among the same culture.
Interpretation plays an important role in the lynching images. These images are altered by time, space, and circumstances under which viewing takes place. However, the African American community successfully co-opted the lynching photographs of white power in order to show audiences the strength and endurance of black americans. Photographs of corpses no longer only illustrate absolute white supremacy because African American communities embraced these type of presentations in order to transform them to draw attention to the realities of lynching and racialized violence. Lynching photographs enabled the african american community to represent and publish their lynching imagery perspective intended to build a black community and collective identity while generating support for legislative remedies such as the Costigan-Wagner bill, as well as calling attention to the more radical Bill for Negro Rights and the Suppression of Lynching.
As Susan Sontag states, “a photograph is not only an image… an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint.” The lynching photographs connect african americans to the image and scene depicted. The images have a sense of place that are charged with meaning. Therefore, through the photograph and the visual presentation of an exact place where a lynching occurred, african americans have the opportunity to physically go to the places these images portray. Places that are filled with racialized meanings, thus enabling them to become more in contact with the familiar feeling they have with lynching history even though they were not personal victims. Ultimately, these photographs give the african community agency by physically connecting them to their past and legacy in a way that they could not have done so if it weren't for the photographs.
The lynching photographs conveyed an anti-lynching message that re-conceptualized lynching as a violation of basic rights, and thus invoked indignation and sorrow among the readers. The use of photographs and actual images instead of illustrations, enabled the African Americans to develop a better visual strategy for addressing lynching and created a lexicon of anti-lynching activism that had a greater affect than illustrations. The photographs redeployed lynching propaganda as an effective protest tools. The use of the lynching photographs challenged the lynching propaganda circulating in the white community, and created an oppositional lynching iconography that effectively represented oppression, trauma, and the denial of citizens’ fundamental rights to due process and equal justice. These images exposed the ugly truth about lynching, and inspired activists. Ultimately, the illustrations and cartoons helped, but the use of the lynching photographs by the black community laid the foundation for the equal rights mobilizations in the new century.