In the past weeks, we have discussed whether or not photographs tell the entire “truth.” In Amy Louise Wood’s “Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America,” she stated: “Early viewers of photography believed not only that photographs referenced objective truth but also, particularly in the case of personal portraits, that they revealed deeper, moral truths that lay below the surface of the image” (85). As it turns out, many of the photographs were staged and altered to appeal to certain audiences and wouldn’t be considered artifacts of “truth.”

What are the implications of these alterations, and how does it affect how we view these photographs over 100 years later? Do we, as modern day viewers, see and understand them how the photographers intended for us to see them? Is it even ethical to look at these photos taken by white bystanders and perpetrators of racial violence? (Mathew)

In our past readings and discussions, we have analyzed the importance in the relationship between the photographer and subject. In Brian Wallace's "Black Bodies, White Science" he contrasts photographic 'types' with 'portraits', saying that a type "is a form of representational colonialism" where the subject is already "owned, represented, spoken for, or constructed as silent". On the other hand, portraits have value "because of the viewer's relationship to the sitter, the ability to recognize the subject when he or she is absent".

With these ideas in mind, is it possible for someone to capture a correct 'portrait' of someone with a different cultural background from them? Are photographers able to paint a representative understanding of people if they do not fully relate to the same cultural experience? Also, this reading focuses of photos of the past, but what are examples of ways that modern photographs create and enforce 'types' in todays world? What can we do to dismantle these types? (Ella)

In Brian Wallis's "Black Bodies, White Science," he describes how Louis Agassiz's slave daguerreotypes were "designed to analyze the physical differences between European whites and African blacks, but at the same time they were meant to prove the superiority of the white race." Later on in his article, Wallis talks about the concepts of "the type and the portrait" and discusses an instance where a black photographer had taken reproductions of Agassiz's daguerreotypes and "made them portraits." What exactly are these concepts of "the type and the portrait" that Wallis describes in the reading? In what ways are they similar and/or different? How is power integrated into these concepts? (Jazzlyn)