Mark Sealy: Photography, Race, Rights, and Representation
April 30, 2021, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
In this talk, Mark Sealy will elaborate on how his curatorial work and scholarship examine how Western photographic practice has been used as a tool for creating Eurocentric and violent visual regimes. It uses the central principle of "decolonizing the camera," a process by which an analysis of photography takes place within and against the political and violent reality of Western imperialism. Through this process, Sealy elucidates how photographic practices can explore issues of race and cultural erasure within photographic history through the direct analysis of photographic works, informed by two underlying questions. Firstly, has photography been a liberating device or an oppressive weapon that holds the viewer/producer and citizen/subject in a violent system of continual exposure? And secondly, what epistemic value has photography brought to our understanding of difference?
Dr Mark Sealy MBE is interested in the relationships between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has been director of London-based photographic arts institution Autograph ABP since 1991. He has produced numerous artist publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide, including the critically acclaimed exhibition Human Rights Human Wrongs at Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto in 2013 and at The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2015.
Sealy has written for many international photography publications, including Foam Magazine, Aperture and the Independent Newspaper in London. He has written numerous essays for theoretical publications and artist monographs. In 2002, Sealy and professor Stuart Hall co-authored Different, which focused on photography and identity politics. His notable projects include the exhibition Self Evident Ikon Gallery Birmingham, The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding / Decoding for the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto and seminal and celebrated projects on the works of James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Mahtab Hussain, Maud Sulter and Sunil Gupta are just a few of the many artists exhibitions he has curated. He was also the guest curator for Houston Fotofest 2020 working under the title of African Cosmologies Photography Time and the Other. His recent book, Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time, was published in 2019 by Lawrence and Wishart. His PhD was awarded by Durham University England and focused on Photography and Cultural Violence. Sealy is also currently Principal Fellow Decolonising Photography at University of the Arts London.
