Full Description
Photography, Truth and Reconciliation charts the connections between photography and a crucial issue in contemporary social history. The book examines the prevalence of photography in cultural responses to processes of truth and reconciliation, and argues that photographs are a valuable means through which stories can be retold and historiography can be rethought.
Five compelling case studies from Argentina, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Cambodia underscore the special role that this medium has played in facilitating processes of recovery, and in reconstructing suppressed histories, even when a documentary record of the events does not exist. The diverse practices addressed in this book - including artistic, protest, institutional, archival, legal and personal photography - prompt a new consideration of photography's links to presence, place, time, spectatorship and justice. Collectively, these practices attest to photography's key role in transitional justice, and in shaping historical understanding internationally.
Important reading for students taking photography, visual culture, history and media studies courses, Photography, Truth and Reconciliation explores key historical and theoretical themes, including photography and testimony, international discourses on human rights and justice, and problematic notions of public and collective memory.
Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: The Photographic Witness
2. Photography, Testimony and Presence: Making Visible Argentina's Disappeared
3. Photography, Time and History: Canada's Indian Residential Schools
5. Photography and Place: Recovering Indigenous Australian Histories
4. Photography and Secondary Witnessing: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
6. Photography and Justice: Official and Family Photographies in Cambodia
7. Conclusion
References
Index
