Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe

by Tina M. Campt

Campt explores the affective resonances of two archives of Black European photographs for those pictured, their families, and the community. Image Matters looks at photograph collections of four Black German families taken between 1900 and the end of World War II and a set of portraits of Afro-Caribbean migrants to Britain taken at a photographic studio in Birmingham between 1948 and 1960.

Genres: Photography, History, Nonfiction, Theory, School, Race

256 pages, Unknown Binding

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

Tina Campt is Owen F. Walker Professor of Humanities and Modern Culture and Media. Campt is a black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art. One of the founding researchers in Black European Studies, her early work theorized gender, racial, and diasporic formation in black communities in Europe, focusing on the role of vernacular photography in processes of historical interpretation. Her books include: Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Memory in the Third Reich (University Michigan Press, 2004), Image Matters: Archive, Photography and the African Diaspora in Europe (Duke University Press, 2012), and Listening to Images (Duke University Press, 2017).

Reviews

[Ayanna Dozier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tina Campt’s Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe examines the structures of feelings that circulate and travel through photographs in the Black diaspora in Europe. Campt’s strength is her use of theory, specifically how she is able read affect in photography and connect that to issues of embodiment, memory, and visibility. While Campt’s analysis of the photos are sufficient, I found them less convincing for her overall argument saw them at odds with her theoretical analysis. Additionally, Campt does excellent job of balancing out academic jargon on affect theory with personal memory and memories, thereby presenting an intriguing and intellectually rewarding read. Scholars/readers of cultural studies, collective memory, and the Black diaspora will find value and interest in this book.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthwhile project. The writing is good; when she tries to explain how pictures are actually music is not.