Without Words You Spoke: Queer Representing, Early Photography and Feeling

By examining historical queerness through the lens of photography, this dissertation examines how the past contributes valuable knowledge about where we have been and where we are going. The history of queer representation is laden with violence, erasure and shame, as well as survival and persistence. I approach this legacy by bringing together three principal topics that I argue are closely related: queer photographic practices, the politics of the archive, and affect theory. Through the analysis of social conditions that formed discourses of homosexuality and industrialism’s development of photography in the late nineteenth century, the tension between oppressive laws and social change comes clear: it reveals a cultural crisis of taxonomy and representation in queer visual history. The slippages between cultural economy and representation are exemplified in nineteenth century visual culture as political economy was increasingly entwined with the individual and the state. Out of this matrix comes the advent of photography. Inexpensive and accessible mechanical reproduction made it possible for the apparatus of photography to be both complicit in the categorization and repression of homosexuality, as well as a site of subversion of the status quo. Conventions in portraiture photography inscribed the construction of normativity through ‘the cult of the empire,’ yet queer subjectivities challenged these standards. A number of specific case studies involving women photographers and photographic subjects – such as Mabel Hampton, Bonnie and Semoura Clark, Alice Austen, and found photographs from my personal collection illustrate a symbolic defiance to hegemonic structures. By investigating archival material with a specific focus on queer history and photography, the case studies illustrate how our affective lives are saturated with political meaning. Photography wields unusual power when examining the relationship between affect and feeling. The affect of photography derives from its insistence on the past. Yet, photography produces a here and now that can resist strictures of heteronormativity and patriarchy through politicized feelings. The approach to queer historization is firmly rooted in notions of social justice imperatives and anti-oppressive political strategies that include racism, gender inequality and classism. Queer archives evoke cultural persistence and knowledge through the affective context of remembering.

Without Words You Spoke: Queer Representing, Early Photography and Feeling

By examining historical queerness through the lens of photography, this dissertation examines how the past contributes valuable knowledge about where we have been and where we are going. The history of queer representation is laden with violence, erasure and shame, as well as survival and persistence. I approach this legacy by bringing together three principal topics that I argue are closely related: queer photographic practices, the politics of the archive, and affect theory. Through the analysis of social conditions that formed discourses of homosexuality and industrialism’s development of photography in the late nineteenth century, the tension between oppressive laws and social change comes clear: it reveals a cultural crisis of taxonomy and representation in queer visual history. The slippages between cultural economy and representation are exemplified in nineteenth century visual culture as political economy was increasingly entwined with the individual and the state. Out of this matrix comes the advent of photography. Inexpensive and accessible mechanical reproduction made it possible for the apparatus of photography to be both complicit in the categorization and repression of homosexuality, as well as a site of subversion of the status quo. Conventions in portraiture photography inscribed the construction of normativity through ‘the cult of the empire,’ yet queer subjectivities challenged these standards. A number of specific case studies involving women photographers and photographic subjects – such as Mabel Hampton, Bonnie and Semoura Clark, Alice Austen, and found photographs from my personal collection illustrate a symbolic defiance to hegemonic structures. By investigating archival material with a specific focus on queer history and photography, the case studies illustrate how our affective lives are saturated with political meaning. Photography wields unusual power when examining the relationship between affect and feeling. The affect of photography derives from its insistence on the past. Yet, photography produces a here and now that can resist strictures of heteronormativity and patriarchy through politicized feelings. The approach to queer historization is firmly rooted in notions of social justice imperatives and anti-oppressive political strategies that include racism, gender inequality and classism. Queer archives evoke cultural persistence and knowledge through the affective context of remembering.

Post-Orientalist Comments by Contemporary Women Photographers

Today, Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, etc. women photographers have made the orientalist visual expression form the focal point of their art: the orientalist painting tradition as a result of the painter Delacroix's trip to Morocco in 1832, the imagination world and the painting tradition shaped by the economy-politics of the period, from the male-dominated point of view, the harem, the chamber, etc. It is based on fantasies based on the female body in oriental spaces. Although this painting movement maintained its effectiveness between 1832-1914, it is taken as a reference by photographers in today's postmodern art environment. In today's photography art, Shirin Neshat, Lalla Essaydi, Shadi Ghadirian, Majida Khattari, Meriem Bouderbala, who have Eastern and Western cultures and mostly live in Western countries, visualize the position of women in their countries with an interdisciplinary interpretation in their photographic visions that they shape with a post-orientalist attitude.

Descolonizando narrativas sobre mulheres: a fotografia como potência

As narrativas sobre mulheres, mesmo dentro dos estudos feministas, podem ser entendidas como normativas e colonizadoras, especialmente quando se dão a partir de um olhar ocidental sobre as mulheres do terceiro mundo. A partir da análise do pensamento da autora indiana Chandra Talpade Mohanty, este artigo busca relacionar seu discurso com exemplos de mulheres fotógrafas que buscaram desconstruir essa estrutura hierárquica do olhar, como Claudia Andujar, Graciela Iturbide, Nair Benedicto e Susan Meiselas, além das reflexões da artista interdisciplinar Grada Kilomba, em diálogo com outros autores do campo da imagem. A fotografia pode ser considerada, assim, uma ferramenta de escrita de novas narrativas de resistência.Palavras-chave: Feminismo. Fotografia. Mulheres fotógrafas. AbstractNarratives about women, even within feminist studies, can be understood as normative and colonizing, especially when they are done from a western perspective on third world women. Based on the analysis of the thought of Indian author Chandra Talpade Mohanty, this article seeks to relate her discourse to examples of female photographers who sought to deconstruct this hierarchical structure of the gaze, such as Claudia Andujar, Graciela Iturbide, Nair Benedicto and Susan Meiselas, in addition to the reflections of the interdisciplinary artist Grada Kilomba, in dialogue with other authors in the field of image. Photography can thus be considered a tool for writing new narratives of resistance.Keywords: Feminism. Photography. Women photographers.