Jordache A. Ellapen reflects on his photographic project, Queering the Archive: Brown Bodies in Ecstasy, which blends photographs from his family archive with contemporary portraits shot in a studio. The work examines the intersections of race, sexuality, and eroticism as they relate to the in/visibility of black and brown queer bodies and subjectivities in South Africa.

Jenny Sharpe considers the visual power of the imperial picturesque. Analyzing touristic photography of Indian field workers in the Caribbean, Sharpe argues that a “coolie picturesque” simultaneously reveals and conceals the permanent settlement of Indians and their racial mixing with Afro-Jamaicans.

Analyzing the staging and composition of archival photography of South Asian laborers in 19th-century Jamaica, Anna Arabindan-Kesson reflects upon the role of photography in evoking particular colonial narratives about indenture, the perception of Indian laborers’ assimilability, and Jamaica’s modernization.

Imvuselelo: The Revival includes photographs of some of the 15-18 million members of the African Zionism movement, a Christian practice, unrelated to Jewish nationalism, which centers healing.

Take a virtual tour through Sabelo Mlangeni's exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center.

Drawing on her own family history and the artworks of three mixed-media artists, Tao Leigh Goffe explores how visual art can produce a global transoceanic conception of Afro-Asia. How do Albert Chong, Richard Fung, and Tomie Arai use vernacular photography to examine the affective ties of diaspora? 

We owe others our language, our history, our art, our survival, our neighborhood, our relationships, … our ability to defy social conventions as well as support these conventions. All of this we learn from others. None of us is alone; each of us is dependent on others.

–Toni Morrison

The challenge was...

In the endless debate between the old and the new, does sentimentality get in the way? How do we reconcile the desire to preserve the urban landscapes of the past with the need to meet the living needs of the present?

In his final film, the late Iranian director pushes the boundary between photography and film to its limit by breaking down the distinction between moment and duration. This reimagination of form would never have been possible without Kiarostami’s openness to digital techniques.

Can one explore and document the liminal through images?