Image Matters

In Image Matters, Tina M. Campt traces the emergence of a black European subject by examining how specific black European communities used family photography to create forms of identification and community. At the heart of Campt's study are two photographic archives, one composed primarily of snapshots of black German families taken between 1900 and 1945, and the other assembled from studio portraits of West Indian migrants to Birmingham, England, taken between 1948 and 1960. Campt shows how these photographs conveyed profound aspirations to forms of national and cultural belonging. In the process, she engages a host of contemporary issues, including the recoverability of non-stereotypical life stories of black people, especially in Europe, and their impact on our understanding of difference within diaspora; the relevance and theoretical approachability of domestic, vernacular photography; and the relationship between affect and photography. Campt places special emphasis on the tactile and sonic registers of family photographs, and she uses them to read the complexity of "race" in visual signs and to highlight the inseparability of gender and sexuality from any analysis of race and class. Image Matters is an extraordinary reflection on what vernacular photography enabled black Europeans to say about themselves and their communities.

“Campt offers a compelling study of how ‘engaging the photograph as a dynamic and contested site of black cultural formation’ and belonging leads to insights about representation extending well beyond substantive particularities. In prose readily accessible to undergraduates, she adapts current theories concerning the intentionality of photography, "image-making as a collective and relational practice of enunciation," and "haptic visualities" to case studies of black German and British identity formation.... Recommended.” - A.F. Roberts, CHOICE Magazine, “Image Matters is a valuable addition to the body of knowledge on diasporaand transnationalism. The work also provides significance to the field of visual rhetoric and may prove indispensable to other similar studies. Furthermore, given the nature of the images and the stellar research this work can be effectively incorporated into the realm of psychology and sociology. At the very least, Campt upholds the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words and effectively challenges us to seek a deeper meaning of the photographs we view.” - Mary Vanderlinden, Ethnic and Racial Studies, “Campt, by merely presenting unseen images of these African people, accomplishes much. She also proves that the African Diaspora that we all know from history books and discussion isn't as streamlined as we thought. Image Matters presents a complex story on race, gender and image control of a people who haven't controlled their image in a long time.” - Stephon Johnson, New York Amsterdam News, “In Image Matters Tina Campt explores a visual nexus of black European subjectivities through an innovative interrogation of vernacular photography. This volume is a beautifully detailed account of Campt’s investigation, one that gracefully unfolds its unexpectedly private moments, moving public provocations, and at times chilling accounts of our perpetually returning historical legacies. Campt has gathered a stunning array of photographs. . . .” - Vera Ingrid Grant, CAA Reviews, "In this lucid and meticulously argued book, Tina M. Campt questions the way we see and understand race by examining family photographs of black Europeans. Her detailed readings of studio portraits, snapshots, and orphaned images engage the multiple sensory registers on which images solicit and touch us. In our encounters with these photographs of belonging, displacement, and exclusion, we are reminded why images matter."—Saidiya Hartman, author of Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route

Tina M. Campt is Director of the Africana Studies Program and Professor of Africana and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich.