Seeing Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography

Seeing through Race is a boldly original reinterpretation of the iconic photographs of the black civil rights struggle. Martin A. Berger's provocative and groundbreaking study shows how the very pictures credited with arousing white sympathy, and thereby paving the way for civil rights legislation, actually limited the scope of racial reform in the 1960s. Berger analyzes many of these famous images--dogs and fire hoses turned against peaceful black marchers in Birmingham, tear gas and clubs wielded against voting-rights marchers in Selma--and argues that because white sympathy was dependent on photographs of powerless blacks, these unforgettable pictures undermined efforts to enact--or even imagine--reforms that threatened to upend the racial balance of power.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Berger, Martin A.
Published: 05/02/2011
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 9780520268647
Pages: 243
Weight: 1.27lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.90w x 0.70d