Photography, Memory and Women in May ’68

The dominant narrative configurations of May ’68 in France have rendered the figure of the “radical protesting student”—typically male—as the primary actor in the events, while women’s role has largely been erased from the “official” collective memory. The most frequently exhibited and published visual documents of the era dovetail neatly with these narratives, representing female participants either as problematic emblems or as passive, inactive, and bereft of political agency. This chapter focuses on photographs of female participants in the events that can be considered “canonical,” and asks how women have been portrayed in the visual narratives that dominated the post-1968 public discourse and whether alternative representations of them were, and maybe still are, excluded from this canon

Forgotten Solidarities in the Atelier Populaire Posters

The paper examines some of the ‘forgotten’ posters of the Atelier Populaire, which were collectively produced by artists, workers, students and activists among others in the occupied Beaux-Arts school during the events of May ’68. The paper argues that alternative visual narratives are to be discovered in these posters, which break away from the representations of the events as youth revolt and the geographical reduction of the events to Paris and the Cartier Latin. Looking at them anew allows us to rediscover the unique solidarity among students, workers, farmers, the migrant workers and the unemployed, as well as to decipher the anti-capitalist character of the movement and its global dimensions

Spectacular Images of the ‘Refugee Crisis’

The current ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe has generated an abundance of photographs, which have been circulated in print and digital media since 2015. This article focuses on two of the most reproduced of these photographs: that taken in September 2015 of Aylan Kurdi’s dead body near the Turkish coast and a photograph of refugees walking along the Croatian-Slovenian border which was used by the UK Independence Party (UKIP) during the summer of 2016 as part of their pro-Brexit campaign. The article examines the repeated visual tropes which perpetuate stereotypes of refugees as either miserable, helpless victims or threatening subjects. It further questions the ways in which the ‘individual’ and the ‘collective’ have been framed in these photographs, in ways which contribute to dominant and uncontested visual narratives of the ‘refugee crisis.’ The paper contends that the passive acceptance of these reified representations of the refugee experience in these media-saturated times equates to uncritical approval of the sociopolitical conditions from which these photographs are generated. Finally, it argues that only through the rejection of such spectacular images can we hope to open up a serious, critical, public debate about the ‘refugee crisis’, the necessity of which is becoming increasingly urgent

La Culture est l’Inversion de la Vie

Frances Stracey, Constructed Situations: A New History of the Situationist International, London: Pluto, 201

Art, Activism and the Tate

The display of Allan Sekula’s Waiting for Tear Gas (white Globe to Black) at Tate Modern from July 2013 to May 2014 coincided partly with Liberate Tate’s creative civil disobedience against Tate’s engagement with their sponsor British Petroleum. The paper examines these two parallel episodes of Tate’s recent institutional history, focusing on the tension emerging from the Tate’s display of an artwork, which stems directly from a grassroots activist movement, and the institutional reluctance to engage with an artist-activist collective that targets the museum itself, or its sponsors. The paper argues that Sekula’s artwork and Liberate Tate’s collaborative artistic interventions and participatory performances are part of a horizontal and rhizomatic network of anti-capitalist struggles against the privatization of every aspect of life, the destruction of the environment and the degradation of human relations and attest to their unfinished nature

Resist! The 1960s Protests, Photography & Visual Legacy

The book is a collection of the visual heritage of that period and includes some of the most iconic images from that time, making it very clear just how the protest movements left their mark on history and modern-day visual expression